Blood Rites Read online

  “You’re as good as dead,” he told her.

  Garcelle kept her face impassive and replied, “So, get it over with.”

  “Not so fast, child. I’ve got a message for your family.”

  “You think that will change the way they deal with you?” She laughed, enjoying the expression on his feral face. “You’ll only make things worse.”

  “Be worse for you, no doubt. Think Daddy will like it if I send ya back in pieces?” Channer narrowed his eyes and asked, “Why are you smiling?”

  She kept the mocking smile in place while answering his question. “I’m imagining the things he’ll do to you. How long he’ll keep you tied up on his table, screaming.”

  “You like the screams, eh? When I start on you, scream plenty for me, will ya? No one’s coming to help you.”

  That was true, she realized. The Viper Posse occupied this whole apartment complex. She sat in unit 227, bound to a straight-backed wooden chair with plastic zip ties. She could scream until her lungs bled, and the other yardies wouldn’t interfere with Channer’s fun. Nor would the neighbors, who’d been terrorized into submission when the Viper Posse routed tenants from the Palm Glades complex and converted it into their headquarters.

  Police? Forget about them. They patrolled Kendall’s white neighborhoods routinely, but required an urgent call to trespass on Jamaican turf around Three Lakes. The last time they’d visited Palm Glades, it sparked a confrontation that sent nine yardies to jail, and seven coppers to the hospital. The gang was not evicted, though, because it kept a battery of top-end lawyers on retainer and possessed a bill of sale for the suburban property.

  No. She was on her own, and that was bad.

  Fatally bad.

  She couldn’t bargain with the Viper Posse’s local honcho, couldn’t bribe her way out of the trap. Channer was bent on capturing her father’s territory, taking everything he had, and would not settle for a consolation prize.

  She was a pawn to him—or worse, a living sacrifice.

  “I don’t want to cut your head off first,” Channer said. “That spoils my game and tells your daddy he’s got nothing left to hope for. Mebbe I should start down on the other end, eh?”

  Garcelle tried to imagine what it would feel like, having her feet cut off. Would she bleed out? Not likely, if her captors wanted her alive and suffering. A propane torch would cauterize the wounds, but searing would not stop infection. Not that it would help. Channer would no doubt dismember her completely, long before gangrene could end her misery.

  Tell them no more than you have to, she thought grimly. Everybody breaks, but hold on as long as you can. Make the bastards work for it.

  “Ten toes it is,” Channer declared, and moved off toward the doorway. He opened it and called to someone on the Other Side, “Gimme the little saw, brother. And one of those blue tarps.”

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD GONE all out, picking his tools for the Miami mission. Riding with him on the southbound highway was a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a Benelli M4 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun, a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum pistol, and his favorite Beretta 93R selective-fire sidearm. For long-range work, he’d picked a Barrett M98B sniper rifle. The Barrett is a bolt-action weapon, feeding .338 Lapua Magnum rounds from a ten-round detachable box magazine. Top off that ensemble with spare magazines all around, plus two dozen M68 fragmentation grenades, and the Executioner was ready to rumble.

  His first target was a so-called social club, the Kingston House, located on Southwest 80th Street near Snapper Creek Park. Intel from Stony Man identified it as a hangout for the Viper Posse’s goons and part-time headquarters for Winston Channer, honcho of the posse in South Florida. Bolan could not predict if Channer would be in when he came calling, but he pegged the odds at fifty-fifty. Either way, demolishing the joint and taking out the posse soldiers he found on-site would send a message to the man in charge, and ultimately back home to Jamaica.

  Bolan parked his Mercury a half block north of Kingston House, secured it and set the ear-splitting alarm. If all went well, he wouldn’t be gone long, and he’d return to find his rolling arsenal where he had left it. Otherwise, he’d have to improvise.

  Leaving his ride, he took the Steyr AUG with an AAC M4-2000 suppressor attached, both handguns and a couple of grenades. It was supposed to be a hit-and-git, not a protracted battle, but he prepped for any snags he could imagine, and a few that didn’t come to mind immediately. Bolan’s protracted war had taught him that preparedness counted for more than luck.

  The place looked dead as he approached it. Never meant to draw outsiders, the exterior was relatively drab: two stories, with beige stucco on the outside, a flat roof, no neon flashing in the night. Unless you were a Viper Posse member or associate, you had no reason to stop at Kingston House, and any trespassers would be discouraged in a most emphatic way.

  He scouted the approach and found no guards watching the street. Given the state of modern CCTV cameras, lookouts might well be watching him from inside, but Bolan wasn’t bothered by that possibility. He was expecting opposition.

  Counting on it.

  He walked behind the club, bringing the Steyr out from underneath his lightweight raincoat. It had drizzled off and on all day, reason enough to wear the coat that hid his hardware, but the time had come to let it rip.

  Bolan tried the back door, found it locked and fired a muffled 3-round burst into its dead bolt, shattering the lock. He followed through without a second’s hesitation and found himself inside a corridor that passed a kitchen on the left and restrooms on the right. Apparently no one was using either of the two facilities just now. Ahead of him, Bolan heard voices coming from some kind of rec room, half a dozen by the sound of it, engaged in a friendly argument. Above his head, the sound of footsteps told him there were other posse members on the second floor. There was a heady scent of ganja in the air.

  “That girl’s hot,” one of the possemen was saying, “know what I mean?”

  “You’re speaking true,” another said.

  “I wouldn’t lie to ya,” the first voice said.

  Bolan crashed the party, counting seven heads around a pool table. He was quiet till one of them spotted him and squawked a warning to the others. Then he began to take them down with nearly silent 5.56 mm NATO rounds. They scrambled, seeking cover, groping for their weapons.

  First to draw his pistol was a porky soldier with a rainbow-colored Rasta cap atop his head. Before he had a chance to aim, Bolan’s next burst sheared off the left side of his face, but the soldier still managed one wild shot as he was falling, wasted on the ceiling. A shout up there told Bolan that the club’s other inhabitants were on alert and pounding toward the stairs.

  * * *

  “WHAT’S THAT?” WINSTON CHANNER demanded, standing over his captive with a hacksaw in his hand.

  “Sounds like your boys are shooting each other,” Garcelle Brouard told him, smiling.

  Channer swung his free hand, striking her across the right cheek. Spitting blood, Garcelle supposed she was fortunate he hadn’t used the saw.

  “Big man,” she sneered, with crimson lips. “Untie me, and we’ll see how tough you are.”

  “I’m gonna fix this, then come back and fix you, hear me?”

  “Big talk,” she spat at him, expecting to be struck again, but Channer turned away, setting the hacksaw on a nearby table as he left the room. A moment later, he was back again, drawing a switchblade from his pocket, snapping it open as he moved behind her chair.

  “Looks like your daddy sent his man to fetch you home. I’ve got a big surprise for him. He’s as good as dead.”

  She felt the blade pass through the plastic ties that held her arms behind the chair. Then the knife was at her throat, the point drawing a bead of blood below her jawline on the right. Channer’s free hand gripped her hair as she slowly rose to stand beside him, measuring her chances of escape.

  Not good.

  “You think I’m gonna let you go? No
t gonna happen, trust me. I want your daddy’s man to see your head come off.”

  Hearing that, she almost turned to grapple with him, then decided she might have a better chance once they were on the staircase leading to the ground floor. He would be off balance then, distracted by the chaos going on below, and if she timed her move exactly right—

  Big if, she thought.

  One slip, and he would punch the blade up through her soft palate, into her brain, or simply slash her throat. There’d be no time to cut her head off with the relatively small knife, but Channer didn’t need to. He could kill her with a short flick of his wrist, and have the same effect on her father.

  Not that it would save Channer.

  Garcelle hoped she’d live long enough to see her father’s men blast Channer into hamburger and leave him leaking on the stairs. It would be worth it, to die knowing she had outlived the worthless Rasta piece of crap.

  He shoved her through the office door, onto the landing and toward the staircase. More shots echoed from below, but they were dying out now. Which side would emerge victorious? She guessed it didn’t matter, but she hoped to see Channer’s thugs laid out, dead or dying, when they reached the stairs.

  Not justice, necessarily, but vengeance.

  Other Viper Posse soldiers had collected on the second-story landing, staying well behind their captain and his human shield. They seemed content to let Channer press forward, face the danger on his own and possibly distract the enemy before they joined the fight.

  Cowards. Given the chance, she would have spit on them. But there would be no chance. Garcelle knew she was almost out of time, about to die at twenty-six years old.

  They reached the stairs and Channer shouted, “Hold on down there! I wanna show you somethin’.”

  “Come down, then,” somebody answered. Not a voice she recognized.

  A white man stepped into view, surprising Garcelle. She didn’t recognize him, knew she would have remembered that grimly handsome face if they had ever met. Who was he, then? And why was he here, killing Channer’s men?

  “Who are you?” Channer demanded, tightening his grip on Garcelle’s hair, pressing his blade’s tip deeper into yielding flesh until she nearly sobbed.

  “Is that your last question?” the white man asked.

  “How about I cut this gal’s head off. How’d that be?”

  “You could do that,” the gunman said. “But what comes next, without your shield?”

  “I’m not joking,” Channer snarled. “Ya think I’m scared? I’m going to—”

  Before he could complete the thought, the white man raised his weapon, aimed, and fired a shot that seemed to be directed at Garcelle.

  * * *

  THE BULLET FOUND its mark, ripping through Channer’s left arm, which was raised to let him clutch the woman’s hair. Its impact drove him backward and broke his contact with the hostage, who immediately lurched away from him and tumbled headlong down the stairs. A fall like that could kill you, but she landed at the bottom more or less intact and started struggling to her feet.

  “Come on!” he snapped at her, still covering the balcony above. Channer had fallen back, beyond Bolan’s line of sight, but others were crowding after him, their faces peeping cautiously downstairs.

  Bolan discouraged them with a short burst that ripped through ceiling tiles and brought fragments raining down. A couple gunmen fired blindly in his direction, pistol shots, and missed by yards. Bolan stood his ground and let the woman scramble toward him, fresh blood weeping from her nose and from a cut beneath her jaw.

  “Please, get me out of here!” she begged him. “I can pay you!”

  “That way,” Bolan said, nodding toward the hallway leading to the back door, “while I cover you.”

  She ran, seeming no worse for having fallen down the stairs. If she was hurt, she managed to disguise it well. Bolan retreated from the staircase, walking backward as he followed her, still covering the Viper Posse shooters on the second floor. Each time one showed his head, Bolan squeezed off a round or two and sent them ducking out of sight.

  He heard the back door open as the lady shoved against it, bursting out into the night. She might run off without him, and if so, he wished her well. The last thing Bolan needed was a sidekick looking for sanctuary.

  But she didn’t run. He found her waiting in the alley, looking frantic. “Don’t tell me you walked here,” she implored, her accent something from the French Caribbean. Haitian, maybe, though there were other possibilities.

  If she was Haitian, it put her presence at the Kingston House into a new perspective. Not merely a captive, but perhaps a prisoner of war.

  “The car’s down that way,” Bolan told her, pointing. “Half a block.”

  “You’ll take me out of here?”

  “I didn’t plan to hang around.”

  “Please hurry, then, before they catch us!”

  She was off and running after that, with no idea what Bolan’s ride might look like. To delay pursuit, he fired another short burst through the open door, no targets yet in sight, then followed her at double time.

  “The Mercury,” he told her as he caught up.

  “This? It’s old.”

  “It’s vintage,” he corrected, and unlocked the doors remotely, sliding in behind the wheel while she sat next to him.

  Downrange, he saw armed men erupting from the back door of their social club, scanning the alley and the street beyond for targets. Bolan left his headlights off as he revved the Marauder’s engine, cranking through a tight U-turn, but they were sure to spot him anyway. Less than a minute later, he had two cars in pursuit and gave up the deception, switching on his lights.

  “They’ll catch us,” she worried aloud. “We can’t outrun them in this…this….”

  “Don’t underestimate three hundred ninety cubic inches,” Bolan said, still not entirely sure he wanted to escape from Channer’s men. More damage could be done by getting rid of them for good, but he required an open killing ground for that, without civilians in his line of fire.

  Someplace like the nearby park, perhaps, where he could find some combat stretch, with all the kiddies safely home for dinner, schoolwork and TV time with families.

  “They’re coming!” his passenger warned.

  “Stay down after we stop,” he told her.

  “Stop! What do—”

  “Hang on! We’re almost there.”

  2

  The winding road led Bolan through Snapper Creek Park to a deserted visitor’s center. A couple of dim lights still burned inside for security’s sake. The extra cover wouldn’t hurt when he went EVA, and he was hoping the trees around the building would conceal muzzle-flashes from drivers passing by. As for the racket, he could muffle only his own guns. The rest were out of his control until he silenced them by force.

  He reached the smallish parking lot and put the Mercury Marauder through a tight bootlegger’s turn. Bolan switched off the headlights as he killed the rumbling engine, grabbed the Steyr and was out of there in seconds flat.

  “What about me?” his passenger called after him.

  “Stay there!” he snapped, and left her, merging with the night.

  It wasn’t dark for long. Two chase cars were approaching on the same road he had followed. They claimed both lanes, so no one could slip past them, high beams swallowing the darkness, but they weren’t in any hurry now. Still making decent time, but nothing risky as they came on, sniffing for an ambush.

  To the north, where Bolan could have fled the park along another looping road, a third car was approaching, headlights off, a subtle touch defeated by the widely spaced floodlights. It had been a smart move, sending in another team to cut off his retreat, but Bolan wasn’t worried yet.

  Three cars, say four men to a ride unless they packed them in like cocktail sausages. A dozen wasn’t all that many if he handled it correctly. If he blew it, on the other hand, one man was all it took to bring him down.

 
Bolan tracked the two cars on his right through the Steyr’s integral telescopic sight. He put his first round through the tinted windshield of the chase car rolling down the left-hand lane, approximately where the driver’s face should be. The car lurched, started drifting toward a grassy verge, then straightened out and stopped as someone got the steering wheel under control.

  By then, Bolan had shifted to the second car and fired another muffled shot, hoping the silencer that doubled as a flash-hider would cover his position. Round two pierced the second windshield with a plink, but this car didn’t swerve or stall. Instead, it suddenly accelerated toward the parking lot where Bolan’s Mercury sat waiting. The chase car’s headlights were switching off, three doors already opening before it came to rest.

  Call that a miss, on driver number two.

  Three men had tumbled from the first car he’d fired on, and he saw four scrambling from the second now. He had a choice to make, and he made it swiftly, spinning toward the third car, still approaching with its lights turned off. He used the glint of floodlights on the windshield as his guide, firing another single shot intended for the driver.

  And scored this time, if the reaction of the vehicle was any indication. It stopped short, as if a dead weight had slipped down and landed on the brake pedal, the engine muttering to be unleashed, but for the moment stuck exactly where it sat.

  Call that two out of three.

  As men erupted from the third car, Bolan swung back toward the other two. He couldn’t trust the night to cover him forever, even with the AUG’s suppressor masking his location, but he still had time to do some damage now, before he had to move.

  The soldiers sent to kill him were the same sort he’d encountered back at Kingston House, with dreads and baggy shirts intended to evoke an Afro-Caribbean vibe. Their scruffy clothing was in sharp contrast to the bright, shiny weapons they carried, all ready to rip at the first glimpse of a target.

  Coming at them any second now.

  * * *