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  “Clear them out,” he whispered.

  Rojas stabbed her thumb down on the detonator. The twin SLAMs went off, blasting through the drywall. Jagged shrapnel rocketed away from the holes blown by the plasma copper lances. Superheated and accelerated to bullet-like speeds, the shards of debris tore into the Soldados on the other side of the wall.

  The men wearing body armor lost their arms to the scythe-like cutting force of the SLAMs and their shrapnel waves. Those without armor were dead men walking, ribs shattered, lungs perforated, aortas slashed by splinters of drywall and support studs. Screams of agony and terror erupted through the chasms blown through the walls.

  Bolan pulled a hand grenade and lobbed it through one of the ugly gaps, Rojas following up for the other aperture, and they retreated to the next landing. Smoke and dust blew into the stairwell as the fragmentation bombs went off nearly in unison, silencing those left wounded and screaming after the SLAM attack.

  As the dust settled, the door and its frame toppled over, collapsing into the hallway. Bolan and Rojas moved out of the stairwell, keeping an eye on their corners, knowing that even though they’d taken out at least eight men, there would be others waiting for them. There were likely another dozen former JUNGLA troopers on this floor, all armed to the teeth and on edge.

  Despite the hours of standing by in fear and anticipation since the last battle, these were still military men who prided themselves on their endurance and discipline. No matter how long they waited, worried and fretted, they’d be ready for the next assault. Every ounce of doubt and fear would drain away with the surge of adrenaline that only automatic weapons fire and heavy explosions could trigger.

  “Clear left,” Rojas said.

  Bolan didn’t reply; he simply nodded, giving the former crime queen all the information she needed. He advanced to the left. Carbonez’s radios and phones had been located on the north side of the building, and they were headed in that direction. Bolan paused to put a single round in a suffering gangster who rasped and rattled on the hallway floor, then he pulled a second fragmentation grenade from his harness. He thumbed the pin from the safety and rolled the mini bomb hard, like a bowler, bouncing it off the wall and sending it careening around the corner. As the deadly little pineapple-skinned bomb disappeared from sight, he heard shocked cries and the scramble of boots on linoleum. Then the fragger detonated.

  The blast was Bolan and Rojas’s cue to push forward, Rojas providing rear security as they turned the corner.

  Bolan handed out mercy in the form of 9 mm pain pills, putting the injured Colombian guards out of their misery with shots to the head. There was a detonation in the stairwell as the remaining guards from the third floor tripped the mine.

  That blast also brought up a group of gunners who rushed in to flank Bolan and Rojas. La Brujah had just enough of an opening to cut loose with her Mini Uzi, ripping into the two lead cartel commandos with lashing streams of auto fire. A third member of the ambush squad ducked low as soon as he heard gunfire, but Rojas released the trigger after her first burst, pushed the muzzle down and aimed at the prone Soldado, hammering him into the ground.

  Bolan plunged forward, moving on the end of the blast, his chatterbox seeking out targets. The next thing he felt was a hammer blow that turned the world into a brilliant blaze of white. Through his protective earbuds, he heard the muffled crash of a flash-bang grenade. He hadn’t been wearing polarizing goggles, but even those would barely have shielded him from the extreme luminary discharge.

  But it would take lot more than a flash-bang to render the Executioner helpless. Even with his eyes clamped shut, he could hear the sizzling whistle of something coming toward him. Bolan pushed up his Uzi’s frame, sacrificing the submachine gun to protect his arms and torso. Sure enough, the clash of metal on metal met his ears. A machete had crashed into his weapon.

  It was a shame he was so familiar with the sound of a machete slashing his guns, he thought wryly. Based on the angle at which the blade had hit, Bolan calculated the position of the man wielding it. In one swift, smooth motion, he sidestepped and reversed the Uzi, hooking the tube-steel stock of the little sub gun around the neck of the man who had just tried to kill him.

  “Get off me!” the thug snarled in Spanish before the Executioner swung hard, driving his elbow into the man’s face. Bolan felt the hot spray of blood across his forearm, accompanied by the crunch of nose and facial bones. The machete clanged as it dropped to the floor, and Bolan felt his foe’s legs give out beneath him. He would have finished the guy with a 9 mm slug, but after the encounter with the machete, Bolan didn’t trust his Uzi anymore. He drew his Desert Eagle from his hip and fired a .44 Magnum into the Soldado’s skull.

  Up ahead, automatic weapons blazed. He made out the chatter of Rojas’s Mini Uzi and the flashes of the Soldados M4s and handguns.

  Bolan felt along the wall for a doorway, and then ducked into a small room, diving to the floor as bullets whipped over him. A blast went off in the hallway, and the floor shuddered. Rojas must have thrown another fragmentation grenade.

  Bolan’s vision was clearing. A Soldado stepped past the door, on his way to join the fray, but Bolan cut him off, twin two-hundred-forty grain hollow points catching the man under his jaw, cracking open the thug’s brain pan. The dead man crashed into the far wall, leaving a dark smear on the paint.

  The Desert Eagle’s mighty reports drew the attention of Carbonez’s other surviving troops, but they expected their opponent to be on his feet. 5.56 mm rounds sawed through the wall at chest level, leaving the prone Bolan unharmed.

  “How many?” Bolan said into his radio.

  “There are four of them, not counting the thug you dropped,” Rojas said. “They pushed me back, even with my grenade.”

  “That’s okay, it kept me alive,” Bolan responded. He rolled sideways to obtain an angle on one of the Colombian riflemen, and fired the Desert Eagle. The Executioner smashed an ugly pit into the middle of the Soldado’s face, hurling him to the ground and silencing the chatter of the man’s assault rifle. Bolan rolled again as bullets sliced through the wall, chewing at the section of floor he’d been lying on moments before.

  Rojas’s Uzi spoke up, Parabellums ripping out at nine-hundred-fifty rounds per minute. Bolan cut loose with the .44 Magnum, firing through the wall, and despite the roar of gunfire he heard another body thump to the ground. Rojas and the Executioner had put that last guy down in unison.

  “Wait!” a voice shouted.

  “For what?” Bolan bellowed.

  “I’m out…I can’t shoot back!”

  “Who is this?” Bolan asked.

  “My name’s Guerro. My boss is down. He’s hurt, and he’s unarmed, too.”

  Bolan rose to a crouch and peered through the perforated drywall into the office on the other side of the hallway. He could make out one figure, also sitting on his heels, leaning over…something.

  “Please. You wouldn’t shoot someone who’s hurt and defenseless, would you?” Guerro asked.

  Guerro was right; he wouldn’t. Even so, Bolan didn’t trust the situation. Suddenly, a stench reached him—the smell of death and rot. Whatever—whoever—Guerro was leaning over had been a corpse longer than this firefight had lasted—longer, even, than Bolan and Rojas had been in the building.

  Bolan dumped the spent mag in his Desert Eagle and fed it a new one. Carbonez was trying one last ruse, and the Executioner could literally smell the deception.

  Rojas crouched nearby. Bolan could see her more clearly through the ragged hole in the wall.

  “You’re forgetting one thing, Guerro!” Rojas said. “He isn’t alone. La Brujah is here!”

  “Keep her away!” Guerro shouted. “Please! I’m unarmed. I didn’t do shit to that spy, Blanca!”

  Bolan slipped into the hall, moving behind Rojas. “Guerro says he’s got an injured person there,” he whispered to her.

  “I recognize the rot, too,” Rojas said.

  “Just
be ready. He might try something.”

  “Please, accept my surrender,” Guerro pleaded.

  Bolan ignored this as he crept back to an intersection of corridors they’d passed earlier. He heard the crumble of rubble beneath soles, a softly hissed curse. At least one man was sneaking up on them.

  Rojas glanced back at him, and Bolan gave her the nod.

  “Fuck you, Guerro!” Rojas shouted. She opened fire, blazing through the shredded office wall. Immediately, another automatic weapon opened up, but Hilde Rojas stood strong. The Uzi created a tongue of fire as she riddled the drywall.

  That brought the hidden man rushing around the corner, his booted feet pounding the linoleum. Bolan pressed himself against the wall, invisible to the approaching Soldado.

  Antonio Carbonez had both hands on his 1911 as he rounded the corner, obviously expecting to catch Bolan and Rojas off guard. Instead, Bolan clamped one hand around Carbonez’s gun wrist, fingers digging down like steel talons and wrenching the surprised cartel leader off balance.

  “No! No! I had yo—”

  The Executioner blew off Carbonez’s head with a single pull of the Desert Eagle’s trigger, the fat .44 Magnum slug slipping between the bars of his lower mandible, punching through his tongue and stabbing up into the man’s brain. The top of Carbonez’s skull flipped back, torn open like a trap door; a geyser of gore sprayed the ceiling and wall behind him.

  Sightless, glassy blue eyes looked at Mack Bolan for a long moment before the last vestiges of strength left the Colombian. He dropped to the ground, his career as the deadliest, most ruthless man in Cali forever ended.

  “I thought you said you were going to make him beg to be killed,” Rojas said, reloading her Uzi.

  Bolan looked at her from the corner of his eye. “I lied. I’m not into torture. Just destroying threats and ending suffering.”

  Rojas looked at what was left of Antonio Carbonez, slumped on the floor. She shouldered her Uzi and opened fire, riddling the corpse with the full magazine from the submachine gun.

  Bolan remained silent, waiting for her to stop.

  “I know it wasn’t necessary…but animals like this one killed my sons,” Rojas said. “Granted, those sons did the same kind of things, the same way that he did…but I needed to get rid of the hate.”

  Bolan nodded. “So, are you ready to return to the States? We can’t let you go back to New York City.”

  Rojas shook her head. “I’m staying in Cali.”

  Bolan tilted his head. “Not even going back for Pepito?”

  “He’s living a good life without me,” Rojas told him. “I don’t deserve to darken his life. I’ve got a lot to atone for.”

  “If you get back into…”

  “I know. One slip, and you’ll bring me down. And I never want to be on your bad side,” Rojas said. “I’m not made out for polite society, but I can still be a bandit. The kind that fights for good.”

  “The other gangs and cartels in Cali will still want a piece of you…” Bolan warned.

  Rojas smirked. “They’ll be looking for La Brujah,” she explained. “If you catch my meaning, Cooper.”

  Bolan ignored her insinuation, though he didn’t mind that she wasn’t buying his alias—probably hadn’t since day one. She could believe whatever she wanted about him, as long as his true identity remained a secret. “So, there will be no more wicked witch?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  Rojas took it, laughing lightly at Bolan’s evasion. “Goodbye, Matt Cooper.”

  Brunhilde Rojas’s laughter was pretty, a change of pace after days of slaughter, gunfire and screams. Just the sort of soundtrack the Cali sunrise deserved as the two warriors left behind the wreckage of Los Soldados Nuevos de Cali.

  * * * * *

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  First edition July 2015

  ISBN-13: 9781460384688

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

  Killpath

  Copyright © 2015 by Worldwide Library

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereinafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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