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  He thumbed the safety back on and slid the massive hand cannon back into its holster, hanging low on his hip.

  The swift, grisly melee seemed to have been an indication to any other would-be attackers that trying one last assault against the Executioner was a futile idea. No one moved, not even when Rojas arrived, skidding to a halt at the edge of the battlefield.

  Bolan strode up to the sedan and opened the passenger side door. The first aid kit was lying on the shotgun seat, so he picked it up before getting into the car.

  “You look like hell,” Rojas muttered.

  Bolan glanced into the side mirror. Mud and dust were caked to his face and had turned his hair a sickly brownish gray. The mask of earth cracked around the corners of his mouth and his eyes, where the moisture from Cauca’s rancid waters had dried.

  “Might as well look the part,” he said grimly.

  16

  It was sunset when they reached the second safe house.

  “What’s the plan?” Rojas asked.

  Cooper said nothing as he slid his combat harness off of his shoulders, unhooking his belt and the thigh lanyard to drop forty pounds to the floor with a loud rattle. All Rojas could do was watch him peel out of his clothing. He had bruises all across his back and legs, showing where he’d hit the ground in dives for cover, or where debris launched by nearby rocket blasts had peppered him. He had no cuts, no fresh injuries, save for a few nicks on his fingers and palms from where he’d cut himself while driving his knife into the bodies of SNC commandos.

  He’d wrapped those in the car with white athletic tape, but that, too, was removed and tossed aside as he climbed into the shower.

  They’d decided to recharge briefly at the safe house, waiting for Carbonez to let his guard down after the latest bloody battle.

  “We’re going to need some food and drink,” Bolan said, his voice effortlessly wafting above the hiss and spatter of the water. “I think there’s something in the cupboards.”

  “How fancy do you want it?” Rojas asked.

  “Open can, pour down throat is good enough for me,” Bolan answered. “Do what you need to stomach it.”

  Rojas moved to the small kitchen. She’d never imagined that she’d be pulling housewife duty, but she had to admit she was hungry, too. She found some ground beef and threw it into a frying pan, mixing in pepper and spices, seasoning it as she whisked and turned it over. She poured some tomato juice into the mix, and the concoction crackled and sizzled. She added some cheese once the beef was cooked.

  Rojas threw some tortillas on to a flat pan and let them brown. A little work with a head of lettuce created enough slaw for two people, and by the time Bolan emerged, fully dressed, she’d made a couple of gigantic burritos for each of them.

  They didn’t speak much as they ate. They were going into action again soon; Carbonez was going down, and neither Rojas nor Matt Cooper needed to give voice to that notion to believe it.

  * * *

  IF EUGENIO “GUERRO” DELGADO wanted to know exactly what desperation smelled like, then all he had to do was take a deep breath in the command center. The air was a cocktail of perspiration, secondhand smoke, stale beer, cold coffee and more than one bottle filled with urine. Carbonez wasn’t allowing for a single bathroom break that couldn’t be poured out down a sink.

  Carbonez leaned on a table, puffing yet another cigarette down past the end of the filter before crushing it out on the plastic veneer of the tabletop.

  Another addition to the stench of despair: hot, melted polymer.

  “Hit me,” Carbonez grunted, edging his mug along the table to Guerro.

  “Why don’t you lie down for a bit,” Guerro suggested. Carbonez’s cold blue eyes locked on him, as if Guerro had said something about his mother’s relations with a stray dog.

  “Sorry, sir,” Guerro said, snatching the coffee mug off of the table and heading to the hallway for a refill.

  Along the way, he passed the small office where the drone operator lay, the scent of decay setting in and spreading into the corridor like an infection. Guerro grimaced at the way his boss was coming apart at the seams. Sure, it was good thinking to stay primed and ready for the next assault. The general only had the small contingent of gunmen inside the compound left to count on. Any attempt to seek assistance from outside of the organization would be tantamount to suicide. A moment of weakness and an ounce of desperation would be all the signal a rival cartel needed to move in and take power.

  There was only one thing keeping the scavengers at bay, and that was Carrillo’s warning.

  “Spread the word. Los Soldados de Cali Nuevos are ending. If you don’t want to die alongside them, stay out of my way.”

  The other cartels seemed to be paying heed to that admonition. From the moment the Witch and the American had set foot in Colombia, the entire criminal underworld seemed to sense that a horrific storm was coming.

  No, Guerro thought. Storms come once. They strike, and though they may rage violently, they leave eventually. This was something different, something malicious, a force of nature that seemed only to pick up steam as it continued on. The American and the Witch were unrelenting in their actions, appearing to gain strength in the face of street ambush, in the face of counterattacks, and now in the face of an entire armed force pulling out all the stops.

  In the wake of over a hundred dead, adding to the dozens already lost before Carbonez’s “masterstroke,” Guerro wasn’t feeling much confidence. Still, he had a .45 on his right hip, and there were plenty of former JUNGLA commandos present…

  The men they’d sent to the safe house had been armed with the best and latest rifles and other weapons.

  They’d had rocket launchers.

  And mortars.

  They’d survived ten minutes of mayhem. Guerro hadn’t been in the command center for that; he’d been outside, listening to the war occurring downriver. The blasts of artillery shells and explosive warheads had been undercut by the hiss of automatic weapons.

  In the wake of the barrage, he’d heard even more dramatic explosions erupting as spare mortar ammunition detonated and cooked off. The sound of gunfire had been faint, hard to notice. But Guerro could make it out. They’d sent an army to overwhelm two people, but suddenly it was all for naught. Not only had the SNC wasted valuable ammunition, but they’d now lost the very weaponry that would have fired it.

  Not to mention the men. Vehicles. Not just trucks and cars and motorcycles, but aircraft, too.

  Even the drone they’d snagged from the Colombian government.

  Guerro filled Carbonez’s mug and noticed a tremor in his hand as he put down the pot. He clenched his fist in an effort to stay the shakes, to get himself under control, but the truth was that his heart was pounding hard as he took detailed inventory of their losses for the third time tonight. He glanced up at the clock in the kitchenette and saw that it was two-thirty in the morning.

  How many hours? The sun went down at nine, and Carbonez had unleashed hell at 8 p.m. The general had even been counting on sunset to cover the approach of the attack formation. They’d fired down on the American while backlit by the setting sun, limiting visibility. It was a stratagem that had been used countless times since the beginning of warfare.

  And if it hadn’t been for the enemy having their own ScanEagle, as well as a solid understanding of physics and indirect fire, it would have been an unstoppable assault.

  Would have. Could have. Should have.

  But it hadn’t been.

  Guerro gulped down the coffee from Carbonez’s mug. He blinked, hoping the caffeine would kick in and reenergize him. Everything that was supposed to be sewn up airtight—Macco’s security, Herrera’s unassailable livery, even the reception at the airport—had been shown to be utterly worthless. Guerro couldn’t help but think that this conflict wasn’t some wild-assed, on-the-fly operation. The American and the Witch always seemed to be a step ahead of the Soldados. Even when it seemed as if the SNC had the
upper hand, the pair was always on the offensive, never the defensive. How could that be?

  Guerro refilled the mug for his boss, anxious to get back to the command center. Despite the stink, he’d left his M4 there, and he realized that no handgun, even a .45 auto, was going to help match the assault skills of their enemy.

  He walked along, holding his breath against the stench of the dead drone operator. If they didn’t do anything about the corpse, the odor of rot would fill the building from top to bottom by morning. And if the remaining Soldados kept burning through coffee at this rate, they’d run out before sunrise. Then would come the crashes.

  But Carbonez wouldn’t rest. He continued to watch the security cameras, constantly checking in with his men over the radio.

  No one would rest.

  And after the stress and anticipation of the past few days, the growing paranoia, the dread that nothing they did would work…sleep would not be coming. There was no relaxation on the horizon, unless one party or the other was lying dead on the floor.

  The reek of the dead Soldado in the headquarters was not a good omen.

  * * *

  IT WAS FOUR in the morning, and sunrise would not be for another hour. Mack Bolan and Brunhilde Rojas were both clad in black, moving in silence.

  They’d considered hanging back, peppering the office complex with grenades and shoulder-fired rockets like they’d done at the livery.

  Indeed, that might seem a suitable response for Carbonez after the SNC’s earlier all-out artillery assault. However, the general’s headquarters were in the middle of a Cali neighborhood. Bolan wasn’t willing to let even a single stray shell put innocent people at risk. No, this was going to be close combat all the way.

  The Executioner and his ally had left their rifles and carbines behind, opting instead for weapons designed for close quarters mayhem. They were both armed with Mini Uzi submachine guns—deadly and reliable little chatterboxes that could rip through their thirty-two-round magazines at a rate of 950 rounds per minute.

  They were also packing sidearms, and their faces and hands were blacked out with greasepaint, making them appear to any enemies as shadows come to life.

  Bolan had been in a similar situation when all this started ten days ago. But things had changed since he’d discovered Teresa Blanca’s body in that Texas mansion. That first mission had been a reconnaissance effort. Sadly, it had not been a rescue.

  This assault was one of brutal finality. Bolan was going to make the last blitz to obliterate those who had orchestrated Teresa Blanca’s death—and hundreds of others. Rojas was firmly by his side, armed and ready to fulfill her own thirst for vengeance. She’d been promised freedom for her service, but that wasn’t her motivation.

  Bolan knew that liberty didn’t interest Rojas. And she was well aware that if she returned to being a cocaine queen, the privileges the Justice Department afforded her would disappear.

  When Bolan had made Rojas get out of the sedan, excluding her from the fight at the safe house, he hadn’t been protecting her. He’d sent her a message, and he was fairly certain she’d heard it loud and clear. He’d wanted her to know who was the most dangerous person on this team, wanted to remind her that although they’d accomplished a great deal together, he could have done it alone. Yet he’d chosen her as an ally and had brought her into the final battle. A person like Rojas would take that message to heart. It would keep her loyal, on his side.

  Despite all that, Bolan understood that for Rojas, all of this was worth it because her son, Pepito, would be guaranteed his safety, his freedom. He would live in the United States, grow up to be an honest man, far from the shady corners of inner cities, his hands clean of blood and cocaine. Her presence at Bolan’s side would ensure that no cartel would even glance sideways at her son again.

  Bolan hadn’t asked what Rojas would do when their crusade against the SNC was over. She knew how to survive in the hard streets, especially with her skills and savvy. There was a whole city of scum she could prey on, other criminals whom he’d all but told her were fair game. He’d warned her against harming a single civilian. Maybe, just maybe, she could make a difference, a former cocaine queen, working to save lives, not destroy them.

  The office building, long ago taken over by the SNC, was ringed with video cameras, and there were sentries outside, patrolling in silence. Bolan pulled out his electromagnetic gadget and aimed at a camera. Except for the click of the activation switch, the device didn’t make a sound. He scrambled each camera that came into view as they advanced.

  Now, they were at a service entrance.

  Bolan pulled a remote detonator from one of the pouches on his combat harness, and pressed the trigger.

  In the distance, up the street and far around the corner, a series of cracks and pops erupted, duplicating the sound of an automatic weapon going off.

  In moments, men were racing across the grounds in the darkness, running toward the sound of the faux-gunfire. They were all armed, and they moved with military precision and determination. These were the last of Carbonez’s men, the elite, rogue soldiers he’d chosen as his personal cadre to protect both him and the SNC headquarters.

  The distraction bought the Executioner vital minutes. He removed his chisel-pointed pry-knife from his battle harness and jammed it into the lock of the service door. He gave the broad handle a sharp slap, and the door jolted. The rattle was loud, and Rojas glanced back nervously, but no guards seemed to have been in earshot.

  A second, then a third slap and the dead bolt gave way. Bolan sheathed the knife, gripped the Uzi, then opened the door.

  “Get inside,” he whispered.

  Rojas did as she was told, pausing only long enough to mount a SLAM on the wall just inside the door. She tapped the controls, setting it to motion detection, and then she and Bolan moved along, heading down the corridor.

  They paused at a juncture, Rojas providing cover as Bolan stuck another SLAM on the wall. With its disk-shaped explosive charge, the Selectable Light Assault Munition could spear a lance of boiling copper through a parked vehicle or function as an antipersonnel weapon, blasting out a lethal combination of force, heat and shrapnel.

  Bolan drew the Desert Eagle from his hip holster, snapping off the safety with one sweep of his thumb. He opened fire on a floor tile, blasting away with four thunderous .44 Magnum roars.

  It was time to bring the brave little Soldados inside, so he could slam the door shut on them.

  17

  As Mack Bolan and Hilde Rojas reached the stairs of the office complex, they heard the first SLAM go off.

  Untroubled by the blast behind them, they slipped into the stairwell. Bolan led the way up with long strides, and he crashed open the door on the second floor landing with such violence, he caught the two guards on the other side by surprise. The door slammed into one man’s face with a sickening crack and a spray of blood. The other sentry froze at the sight of the Executioner, midnight-black from head to toe except for two bright, gleaming blue eyes.

  This guy was an easy target, and one that La Brujah took as she passed through the doorway in Bolan’s wake. She pressed the barrel of her Mini Uzi under the surprised gangster’s chin and pulled the trigger. The short tri-burst ripped away his face and split open his forehead, killing him instantly.

  Bolan reached around the door, grabbing the other man by the throat with fingers like iron. The battered thug gurgled briefly before Bolan pressed the tip of his Uzi to the end of the guy’s nose and let loose three 9 mm rounds.

  Soldier and Witch moved up the steps, Rojas going on ahead this time, taking the stairs three at a time. Intel gathered by Stony Man had placed Carbonez and the rest of his high command on the fourth floor.

  When Bolan and Rojas were between the second and third floors, guards burst into the stairwell above them. Rather than meet the Soldados on the landing, they stood their ground and fired up at the group rushing to confront them. The Colombian cartel force were making a racket as th
ey descended, their flashlights slicing into the dimly lit stairwell and giving away each man’s position. Bolan and Rojas, on the other hand, were nearly undetectable, despite the muzzle flashes and reports from their Mini Uzis.

  The cartel soldiers, hoping to catch the invaders off guard, were instead overtaken by a swarm of 9 mm rounds. Two of the five men rushing into the stairwell were wearing body armor that protected them from the initial salvo of hollow points that chewed the distance between them at a velocity of over four hundred yards per second. The other three weren’t as lucky, and they toppled, limp and lifeless, down the steps.

  Bolan let the Mini Uzi drop on its sling, and he pulled the .44 Magnum from his hip. He aimed the Desert Eagle at head level, and in a moment, one of the armored thugs lost his helmet thanks to the explosive over-penetration of two-hundred-forty grains of Magnum power. Beside him, Rojas also transitioned to a sidearm, pulling out the FN Five-seveN and cutting loose with a rapid quartet of shots. The 5.7 mm rounds sliced through the other guard’s Kevlar vest. Rojas’s swift staccato of sizzling lead punched through the gunman’s heart, and he slumped into the railing, his own weight and momentum driving him over the side.

  The corpse bounced off metal on its way down, landing at the bottom of the stairwell in a bloody, mangled heap.

  The pair paused on the next landing, quickly replacing spent Uzi and pistol magazines. The last thing either of them needed was to rush into their next conflict with empty guns. Speed was one thing. Discipline and preparedness made their reflexes sharper and their attacks more relentless.

  Bolan finished reloading and pulled out a SLAM, set it to motion detector mode, and placed it by the door to the third floor. Rojas set up another on the flight just below.

  The SLAM Bolan had placed in the first floor hallway exploded violently, and screams carried into the stairwell. So far, they’d kept the outdoor and ground level sentries at bay with the two antipersonnel mines.

  When Bolan and Rojas reached the fourth floor, they didn’t leave the stairwell right away. Instead, they quickly mounted more of the deadly munitions on either side of the door, setting them to radio detonation. They retreated up several steps, and Bolan nodded at Rojas.