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“Quién es—”

  Bolan charged across the threshold, lunging over the body. The man inside was also half-dressed, but he’d managed to snatch his weapon off the floor and aim it at the intruder. The Executioner sent the man off to his final damnation with a heart-coring second burst. He crumpled against a small desk.

  There was a woman curled up on the bed, her shoulders shuddering as she sobbed. Whatever had happened in here before Bolan arrived, she obviously hadn’t been a willing participant.

  At least those two sickos couldn’t do her any more harm, Bolan thought grimly.

  But this was not Agent Blanca.

  Bolan heard movement on the first floor, heading in his direction. He’d given away his presence, and his mission was far from complete. And now he had to figure out how to keep this woman out of the line of fire.

  All before his enemies reached the top of the stairs.

  2

  With a strong hand, Bolan pulled the crying woman to her feet. Her eyes were red, and her movements were dull and confused, but after an initial squeak of panic, she seemed to realize that Bolan wasn’t going to hurt her.

  He pushed her toward the closet.

  “Stay in there and tuck yourself into the corner,” Bolan said. She slid inside, then quickly pulled the door closed.

  It was time to go loud. Bolan plucked a flash-bang grenade from his combat harness, hurling it into the hallway so it bounced down the steps after a skillful rebound. The canister detonated amidst the group rushing toward him.

  After the explosion had subsided, Bolan scooped up a Kalashnikov and a bandolier from the man he’d taken out in the bedroom and darted into the hall to assess the situation. Four men stood on the landing below, each clutching their eyes or ears. At such close range, the blast would have been strong enough to rupture eardrums. Bolan scanned past the staggering guards. Not much movement down there, so he returned his attention to the landing.

  The sentries had guns, and soon they’d recover their wits and eyesight enough to open fire.

  Bolan shouldered the stock of the Kalashnikov and pumped hot lead at the group, the sharp crack of the rifle informing him that this was a 5.45 mm caliber AK, not the 7.62. Even so, at this range, the high-velocity projectiles slashed through human flesh and shattered bone as they struck.

  It was brutal, but these men would overwhelm him with handgun and machine pistol fire in seconds if he let them. And now Bolan wasn’t just looking out for himself. The girl who’d tucked herself into the closet only had drywall for protection, and drywall was poor cover against high-velocity bullets.

  With half of the magazine from the AK used, Bolan slapped out the spent box, picking up another from a bandolier that the dead man in the doorway wore. Once the firearm was fully loaded, then the Executioner spent a moment tugging the belt of spare mags off of the corpse. Bolan paused to reload. By his estimation, the guard force outside the house would have heard the gunfire, and it would take them about half a minute to enter the building, if that. The most aggressive men would be bursting through the doors now, but cooler heads would not want to rush into a building with an unknown enemy inside.

  That meant he could expect two waves, one full of hot-blooded young bucks, the second a more cautious and experienced group. Bolan kept his ears open for the initial approach, which would be anything but quiet. Now, he had precious seconds to look through the other rooms along this corridor before returning to the bottleneck at the top of the stairs.

  Bolan swept into each bedroom, scanning for any sign of Teresa Blanca. He got to the end of the hallway without finding her, then the sound of men climbing the stairs forced him to direct his attention back to the enemy. The warrior took cover behind a doorjamb, making himself as small a target as possible. He had a clear line of fire against his opposition, as long as they poked their heads over the top of the stairs.

  The first of the gunmen rose up, and Bolan let him go for a few moments. Another guy popped up behind him and covered his partner. The Executioner cut them both down, short tri-bursts punching their bodies sideways.

  Screams resounded from behind and below them as their corpses toppled on to others. Bolan continued shooting, raking the air just over the top step. High-velocity slugs smashed through the faces that popped into view.

  Curses filled the air, and, as if on cue, a wave of gunfire whipped down the hall toward Bolan. Bullets tore into the ceiling and walls, but none came close to touching him. Still, he wasn’t about to sit back and watch the proceedings. Bolan threw a flash-bang grenade off the far wall, and it rebounded down the corridor in a well-planned trajectory.

  Instants later, the distraction device detonated with the force of a thunderbolt. Bolan exploded into the hall, keeping low and covering distance quickly with long strides. He’d reloaded the AK with a fresh magazine, and now he hammered a swath of death and destruction into the Zetas on the stairs.

  Bodies writhed as 5.45 mm rounds cartwheeled through flesh. The hapless gunmen fell backward on to the landing in a gory heap. When there were no men left standing and fighting, Bolan slung his rifle and mounted the rail. Swinging his legs over, he slid down past the landing, then hopped back on to the staircase below the pile of thugs.

  “Es peligroso aquí!” Bolan shouted loud enough for the woman in the closet to hear. “No se mueva!”

  “Si!” she responded.

  She’d survived in her hideout, and she’d stay put long enough. Satisfied, Bolan continued through the house. If Agent Blanca wasn’t on the first or second floors, then she’d be in the basement.

  He reloaded as he walked, discarding the spent magazine in the AK, but he returned it to its sling over his shoulder. If he cut loose with the automatic rifle in the close quarters of a basement, he’d end up deafening himself. He switched to the suppressed Beretta instead.

  He found the entry to the basement and descended the stairs quickly, but with caution. He didn’t want to get caught by a spray of bullets from below, but he wasn’t about to wait around for the next wave of guards to show.

  The basement was well-lit, but the uneasy silence of the subterranean layout set his instincts on edge. If there was a prisoner, there would be guards. And if there were guards, then his appearance should have elicited a response.

  Maybe they were part of the crew that he’d just taken out, but something told him that any hope of rescuing Teresa Blanca was gone. He spotted a hanging sheet of translucent plastic and moved toward it.

  No, Blanca no longer required gunmen at the doorway to keep her prisoner. He pushed aside the rubbery drape and stepped into the slaughterhouse.

  Blanca’s forehead sported a still-smoking bullet hole, and the rest of her body showed signs of recent and brutal torture.

  There was a muffled sound in the corner of the room. Bolan turned and saw a couple of disposal bins. As he walked closer, a muzzle rose shakily from behind one of them. The barrel of a pistol came into view, but Bolan had sidestepped from in front of the gun. He reached over the top of the gun’s slide and clamped down, twisting the weapon loose from the hand holding it with the snap of finger bones. A man cried out, recoiling and kicking one of the canisters aside.

  A man in a white coat held his hand gingerly, his trigger finger broken by the Executioner’s disarm.

  “Was that Teresa Blanca?” Bolan asked.

  The man was in his late forties, his wet hair matted across a receding hairline near the top of his skull. He was drenched with sweat. His big, trembling lips sputtered for a few moments. “Yes. It was her.”

  “And you shot her?” Bolan asked.

  The man gave a jerky nod. “Yes. I heard the gunfire upstairs…”

  “What about the torture?” Bolan pressed. “Were you part of that, too?”

  “Please. I stopped her suffering. Don’t hurt me.” He swallowed hard. “I was just following orders.”

  Bolan pressed a small handgun, a .22 auto-back, into the man’s hand, squeezing his fingers around the weapon. “
I won’t hurt you.”

  The torturer blinked.

  “Take off the lab coat,” Bolan barked.

  “W-why…”

  “Because you’ll be too easy to spot,” Bolan said. “You don’t want to get shot, do you?”

  The man quickly began peeling off his coat. “You think there will still be shooting?”

  Bolan heard footsteps on the stairs he’d just come down. The second wave was here, and part of the group had been dispatched to the basement.

  “Over there!” Bolan shouted. He brought up his big Desert Eagle from its hip holster. As if spurred on, the torturer raised his own tiny pistol, shooting through the plastic tarp hanging in the doorway before the Executioner could even pull the trigger.

  Bolan cut loose with the .44 Magnum to make certain that the Zetas gunmen had something to focus on. The room filled with flying lead, bullets cutting through the walls and plastic alike. Bolan threw himself to the ground. The lab coat guy, however, was not so fast to react.

  Rifle slugs chopped into his chest, throwing him back over the bins he’d been hiding behind earlier. He reached toward Bolan, fingers stretching and clawing for mercy.

  “Physician, heal thyself,” the Executioner said.

  He brought up the Beretta 93R and cut loose, the silencer smothering any telltale flicker from the sleek machine pistol. He focused on one of the enemy muzzle flashes, and suppressed slugs hit one of the gunmen in the head. The other opponent continued blasting away, but he was on the move, trying not to make himself an easy target.

  Bolan blew out the guy’s knee with another tri-burst, and he fell to the ground. The rifle clattered across the floor. The man scrambled to remove his sidearm from its holster, but Bolan stopped him in the act, sending a trio of bullets into the sentry’s skull.

  The gunfire had drawn more guards to the basement, and they sent two grenades down the steps ahead of them. Bolan supported Teresa Blanca’s body with one arm and flipped the steel table with the other. He crouched behind the shrapnel-proof barrier as sheets of shell fragments and notched wire clanged off its surface.

  Bolan lowered Blanca to the floor gently. He sent a quiet prayer to the universe to watch over her spirit, and reloaded the Beretta.

  Bolan kept the machine pistol handy as he grabbed his last banger from his harness and pulled the pin, counting down as the fuse burned. When the time was right, he dropped the grenade into the middle of the group of guards who’d followed their own bombs down the stairs. Bolan released a loud bellow, equalizing the internal and external pressure on his ears to protect himself from the sound of the explosion.

  Bolan rose from behind the steel table and stepped through the shredded plastic sheet. Blinded and deafened foes staggered helplessly around the room. The Executioner lived up to his name, putting bullets into the brains of the trio of Zetas guards directly in front of him. He holstered the machine pistol and pulled out the AK.

  A sentry to the right of him was leaning against a wall, pressing his forearm against his eyes in an effort to restore his burned-out vision. Bolan sliced him in half with a burst from the AK, then turned and spotted another man, blinking and raising his rifle one-handed to gun him down. Bolan sidestepped, aimed the AK with both hands, and tore open the gunman from crotch to throat.

  Bolan headed toward the staircase, doing the math on the diminished guard force. There would be two men left at most, plus the guy he’d left unconscious in the hall closet.

  His AK was low on ammo, so he drew his Desert Eagle from his hip holster. The door at the top of the stairs was closed—the perfect spot for a gunman to wait him out. Bolan dumped the current magazine in the .44 Magnum and slid in a stick of copper-solid hunting bullets. Pure homogenous copper from nose to tail, these slugs were meant to penetrate the heaviest hides in nature. For the Executioner’s purpose, they would tear through walls easily, while causing massive destruction to human flesh.

  He loaded the magazine, racked the slide and put the first heavyweight round into the barrel. He paused to scoop up the conventional hollow point and pocket it, not wanting to waste his ammunition. Then he fired two shots through the drywall on either side of the door. The high speed slugs struck and plowed through the plaster, their mass and velocity preventing any deflection. Bolan heard a scream as a man on the other side was hit.

  A second guy kicked the door open, and Bolan put a round right into his opponent’s rifle. The gun shattered in the man’s grasp, saving his life, for the moment. Bolan continued up the stairs as another figure staggered into view. It was the man he’d clobbered before, and he’d rearmed himself.

  Another stroke of the Desert Eagle’s trigger, and the Executioner all but beheaded him, the copper slug destroying the man’s jaw and blasting out the bottom of his skull. By the time the soldier reached the top of the steps, the man who’d lost his rifle had raced out of the kitchen, leaving the back door bouncing on its frame.

  The first man, who’d screamed as Magnum slugs tore through the wall and then into his body, lay on the ground, curled up and gasping, blood spurting from his neck. Bolan shot a single copper slug into his brain to end his suffering.

  With all of the estate’s guards down for the count, Bolan paused to reload his mostly spent weapons, then pulled out his combat PDA. It was time to call Brognola, to let him know the fate of the missing agent. A corpse wagon—several—would be needed for the bodies left sprawled around the property. They would also need an ambulance to recover and treat the woman upstairs. Without Blanca to rescue, only retrieve, the other woman took top priority.

  And once she was cared for, the brutal thugs who sent Teresa Blanca to die by the inch were going to dominate the Executioner’s attention until every last one of them was dead.

  3

  Brunhilde Rojas’s feet slapped the wet tiles in the prison shower. She admired her taut muscles as she ran the hard, coarse bar of soap over them. Though she was closing in on her fifties, seven years in prison had given her time to maintain a lean and firm body.

  Not that Rojas had worked in the prison weight yard for her looks. She kept her body strong for the sake of survival and the hope that maybe, in ten to fifteen years, when she was released, she’d have a chance to get revenge against the bastards who’d killed her boys.

  It was a long shot, Rojas admitted to herself as the hot water splashed down on her, matting her inch-long black tresses to her scalp. The spatter of droplets on her skin and on the tile almost drowned out the sound of footsteps behind her.

  “Don’t drop the soap, Hilda!” came a husky, slurred voice. Chuckles accompanying the speaker’s own simplistic tittering confirmed to Rojas that she was outnumbered.

  She didn’t stop the shower as she turned to face the trio. The speaker, the leader of this group of women, was two inches taller than Rojas, an even six feet. However, this woman was as wide as two of her. The others were slightly smaller than their leader.

  Despite Rojas’s strength, these women had at least seventy-five pounds on her—each. They were dressed in their orange coveralls, rubber-soled canvas sneakers giving them some traction on the slippery shower floor. Their calloused fists were mute testimony to their experience bludgeoning people.

  Rojas didn’t say anything, and Pequita Morales cracked her knuckles, smirking at each of her minions in turn.

  “Don’t worry, Hilda,” Morales taunted. “We’ll leave your face alone so you can have an open casket funeral.”

  That was all Rojas needed to hear. She squirted the water she’d trapped in her mouth, hitting Morales in the eyes. Rojas slipped off her shower sandals to get more traction from her bare feet, but she needed to get to the high ground. As Morales brought her hands to her face to protect her splashed eyes, Rojas grabbed on to one of the woman’s big, muscular forearms and swung her knee up into the pillowy gut of the hired bruiser. The sudden blow made Morales step backward, pushing her two partners aside and dragging Rojas with her. The naked woman kicked out to her right, the
sole of her foot slapping hard into the cheek and jaw of one of the other brawlers. A screech escaped the woman’s lips as she staggered back.

  Rojas pivoted on her heel and delivered a kick to Morales’s sternum. With the speed and lithe power of a leopard, she then brought her elbow into the side of the second minion’s neck. Pudgy but powerful arms wrapped around Rojas’s shoulders, squeezing her tight and propelling her toward the second bruiser, who was now baring her teeth. Rojas tucked her chin against her chest at the last second. She winced as her opponent’s incisors sliced her scalp before they snapped off against her skull.

  The grappler let go of Rojas, and the naked woman dropped back to her feet. Her most recent opponent was pouring blood from mashed lips and gums. Morales lunged forward again, having recovered quickly from the blow to her chest. Rojas brought up her elbow in a swift scythe, meeting Morales’s face with a crunch. Rojas was knocked off balance as the big woman threw her hands up to her own face. She lost her footing on the slippery floor and hit the tiles. Within seconds, the rubber sole of a sneaker smashed into her ribs.

  It was the woman she’d swatted in the face with her bare foot, giving Rojas what she’d paid.

  Rojas lashed out and snagged the witch’s ankle before she could pull her foot away.

  “Puta!” the attacker spat, hopping and windmilling her arms in an effort to stay on her feet. Eventually, Rojas’s leverage and gravity won out, and the woman slammed to the ground.

  Using every ounce of control in her strong limbs, Rojas rolled on to all fours despite the slickness of the tiles. Two hands clamped on to her neck, hauling her up. Rojas let herself be lifted, feigning weakness as she prepared for her next move. Suddenly, the fingers around her neck let go, and she fell face-first to the floor. She grunted, stunned by the drop.

  Morales stomped hard on Rojas’s shoulder, and she wanted to cry out in pain. She tried to push up off of the floor when something crashed heavily on to her arm and shoulder. Again her face struck the tiles, blurring her vision and jarring her jaw.