Blood Rites Read online

  “He must’ve had help,” one of his soldiers offered.

  “This shit isn’t finished,” Channer said. “I’m gonna find this bastard and he’s gonna say who sent him.”

  “And the woman?” asked his other bodyguard.

  “She’s run home to her papa,” Channer replied. “Where else?”

  “Good thinkin’, Boss.”

  “I’m gonna hear this white man screaming out his lungs. He’ll beg to die before I’m done.”

  One of the soldiers cleared his throat and asked, “You gonna tell the Don, Boss?”

  Damn! Channer had almost let that aspect of the problem slip his fevered mind. His master would be waiting for a call in Kingston, and he couldn’t stall much longer.

  “Of course,” he replied. “I’ll call him soon as I find the scrambler phone.”

  “I’ve got it,” said the soldier to his left, reaching inside his jacket.

  Channer could have slapped him, but he took the phone instead and switched on its scrambler, waiting for the green light to stop flashing and burn steadily. When it was ready, he speed-dialed the only number in its memory.

  Nearly six hundred miles away, a grim voice answered on the second ring. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m sorry, Boss,” he said. “I’ve got bad news.”

  * * *

  Briar Bay Park, Kendall, Florida

  BOLAN HAD PARKED his Mercury and sat there in the dark with Garcelle Brouard. She had declined medical treatment and agreed to speak with him before he dropped her off, her final destination still unspecified.

  “So, Channer picked you up to strike a blow against your father,” Bolan said.

  Garcelle nodded. “I’m not sure if he expected to collect a ransom or dispose of me. Either way, he misjudged my father.”

  “Your father wouldn’t miss you? Wouldn’t pay to get you back?”

  “I cannot say how he might feel if I was dead,” Garcelle replied. “I like to think he’d mourn, of course, but that may be wishful thinking. As for paying ransom? Never. It would set a precedent that he could not abide.”

  Clearly, she was an educated woman, not the standard mobster’s daughter raised on perks and privilege.

  He changed tacks. “Are you sure about the hospital?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, raising a hand to lightly touch her swollen lower lip. “You came—how do they say it—in the nick of time?”

  “That’s how they say it. Were they grilling you about your father’s business?”

  “Trying to, but there was nothing I could tell them. From the time I was born, I’ve been excluded from that side of Papa’s life. It was important to him, I believe, to have a semblance of a normal family. As if that’s even possible.”

  He heard a note of bitterness in Garcelle’s voice and followed up on it. “I guess it isn’t easy on your mother, either.”

  “I suppose it wasn’t, but she died when I was four years old. Was murdered, I should say. A business rival of my father’s set a bomb, and… It was difficult for me to understand, at first. I missed her, as you may imagine. Papa never remarried, although whether out of loyalty to Mama’s memory or to avoid another incident, I couldn’t say. There were tutors, and a governess.”

  “We’ve all lost people,” Bolan said, remembering his parents and his younger sister, lives cut short by the Mafia intrigue that launched his never ending war.

  “That’s true, of course. The past five years, I’ve been away at school in Paris. Papa thought I would be safe there.” With the bare trace of a wicked smile, she added, “If he only knew.”

  “And now, you’re back.”

  “Six weeks ago. It took that long for Channer’s men to find me, I suppose.”

  “Where will you go now?” Bolan asked.

  “Back to Papa, first, to put his mind at ease. From there, I would imagine he’ll send me off again. As long as it’s not Haiti, I’m content.”

  “Not homesick, then?”

  “You’ve been to Haiti?”

  “On occasion.”

  “Then you know the answer to your question. While my family has never suffered poverty, at least within my lifetime, Haiti is a pit of misery and crime. That must sound quite ironic, eh?”

  “Well… Men like your father haven’t exactly helped make things better.”

  “Of course. And, as you can see, I’ve taken full advantage of his filthy money.”

  “It’s a choice,” Bolan acknowledged. “You’re well educated. You could make your own way in the world.”

  “Blood tells, as the saying goes. Also a song, I believe.”

  Bolan wasn’t a preacher. He dropped it. “So, where should I take you?”

  “I have a friend in Coral Gables, if it’s not too far out of your way.”

  He estimated twenty minutes on South Dixie Highway, give or take.

  “Sounds good,” Bolan replied, and fired up the Marauder’s mill.

  * * *

  Windward Road, Kingston, Jamaica

  JEROME QUARRIE HAD NEVER learned to take bad news in stride. He’d been trying, lately, to control his temper. It was sheer folly, in the midst of war, to kill his men each time they disappointed him.

  The way things had been going lately, he’d have no soldiers left.

  And so he listened, teeth clenched, to the story of pathetic failure Winston Channer told him. Nineteen soldiers dead, seven at Kingston House, and twelve lost in pursuit of the mysterious white man who staged the raid. It was a grave loss, nearly ten percent of Quarrie’s whole Miami garrison, but what infuriated him the most was losing the woman.

  His hostage.

  Channer had stopped talking. Quarrie took a deep breath, tried counting to ten as he’d been advised, but only got to five.

  “All those brothers dead, but you’re still livin’.”

  “I nearly lost my arm.”

  “I find out this is your fault,” Quarrie said, “you’re gonna lose your head.”

  “Boss, I didn’t—”

  “Shut up!” Quarrie said. “Find the woman and the man who snatched her from you. Kill the two of them and bring me proof. You can’t do that, I’ll do the job myself, and then kill you. Understand?”

  “All right, Boss.” Relief was audible in Channer’s voice. “It’s all good. I miss, I’m dead.”

  “Remember that,” Quarrie replied, and cut the link.

  He reached for some rum and ganja, for the maximum effect. One scorched his throat, the other seeped into his lungs and made his troubles seem, if not remote, at least a little more removed from his immediate concern. He had already given orders to be left alone, unless the house burst into flames, and even then he knew his men would hesitate to clamor for attention.

  “I’m gonna drink your blood,” he muttered to the unknown enemy, the man who’d appeared from nowhere, slaughtering his men and foiling Quarrie’s scheme. “Don’t think I’ll forget. I won’t stop until I pay you back for this.”

  Until the job was done.

  * * *

  Coral Gables, Florida

  GARCELLE BROUARD HAD no friends in Coral Gables, but she did have an apartment on Granada Boulevard. The man who called himself Matt Cooper dropped her off, wished her well and drove away in his Mercury Marauder with its motor rumbling.

  The doorman greeted her with all the courtesy her high-priced rent deserved, and he solemnly assured Garcelle that no one had come asking for her in her absence. Neither had there been reports of any lowlife gangster types lurking around the neighborhood. The very notion seemed outrageous and amusing, given the development’s security precautions and its good relationship with the police.

  Despite that reassurance, Garcelle exercised her usual degree of caution as she rode the elevator to her floor, one level underneath the penthouse occupied by the star of a TV show set in Miami. She checked the tiny scrap of paper that she wedged between the door and jamb each time she left, unnoticeable until it had been dislodged, and then i
mpossible to put back in the same place once the door was opened. Only Garcelle knew the combination to the door’s keypad. In the rare event of an emergency, firefighters would be forced to use an axe or pry bar to get in.

  She let herself inside, then instantly secured the two dead bolts before she searched the flat, armed with a pistol she kept in the kitchen. There was another wedged between the cushions of her sofa, and a third in Garcelle’s nightstand. One of many things she’d learned from Papa: always be prepared.

  It was embarrassing that she’d been taken by surprise, out on the street, but she was home now, relatively safe—a concept more or less devoid of meaning in the present circumstance—and it was time to let her father know that she’d escaped. As to how much she’d tell him, Garcelle knew the answer.

  Everything.

  She’d lost her cell phone to the Viper Posse, but it didn’t matter. Garcelle grabbed the cordless from the kitchen, took it with her as she roamed through the apartment, checking every room and closet, stopping down to peer beneath the bed. When she was satisfied at last, she sat down on the bed, two guns beside her now, and dialed her father’s number. Abner Biassou took the call, her father’s second in command.

  “Hello.”

  “Abner, I need to speak with Papa.”

  “Miss, are you—”

  “I’m fine. Just put him on.”

  Another moment passed before her father’s voice came on the line.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but I cannot—”

  “Negotiate with kidnappers?” She laughed at him. “Of course not, Father.”

  “But—”

  “That’s why I had no choice but to escape.”

  “You’re free? Where are you? How did you—”

  “Not now,” she interrupted. “This line’s not secure.”

  “Of course. But I must still know where you are, to send protection.”

  “I’m at home and safe for now. But if you’d care to send a car…”

  “I’ll send a caravan,” her father said. “A convoy.”

  “Nothing quite so obvious.”

  “Two cars, then. I insist.”

  “That should be more than adequate.”

  “You constantly surprise me, child.”

  “There are more surprises waiting, when I see you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Good news, or bad?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “I am intrigued.”

  “You must be patient for a little longer.”

  “Lock your doors, and—”

  “I know what I’m doing. Goodbye, Father.”

  She cut the link, cradled the cordless phone and spent the next ten minutes packing what she needed for a stay away from home. Cosmetics were not a priority, but she packed clothes, two extra pairs of shoes and every document she could think of: her driver’s license, passport, birth certificate professionally altered to present her as a native-born American, and so on.

  Garcelle packed her three pistols, as well. There was no point in leaving them behind for an intruder to discover. Two of the guns were Glock 19 Compacts, both perfectly reliable and efficient, but her favorite was the Heckler & Koch P2000 SK, a sub-compact model that weighed only twenty-four ounces while packing ten hollow-point rounds. Garcelle was proficient with all three weapons, but she’d never shot a man.

  Since her experience with Channer’s thugs, she hoped—not for the first time—that she might be favored with the chance to find out what it felt like.

  All in due time, she decided, and was ready when the buzzer rang from downstairs, the doorman announcing that her escorts had arrived. She took her rolling bag, two guns inside it and the P2000 SK in her purse, and left her comfortable flat, perhaps for good. If she did not return, so be it. Finding new accommodations would not be a problem.

  She was more concerned about survival at the moment.

  And revenge.

  * * *

  FROM CORAL GABLES, Bolan traveled north to Miami Shores, a stretch of waterfront abutting Biscayne Bay. Here, the Viper Posse made their presence felt by dealing drugs while skirmishing with the gangs that had preceded them, as well as latecomers who’d claimed a slice of turf after the fact.

  His target was another posse hangout, this one called Armagideon, a Rasta variation on the final clash of good and evil from the Book of Revelation.

  Bolan parked a block down range, on Northeast 96th Street. He locked up the Marauder and took the Steyr AUG and pistols with him as he walked down to the club, scanning the street along his way for any lookouts. He saw none and wondered if word of his first clash with Channer’s minions hadn’t reached the village yet, or if the soldiers here had chosen to ignore it.

  Either way, they were about to get a wake-up call.

  As he approached the club, Bolan heard its roof-mounted air conditioner kick into life, its droning loud enough to cover him as he tried the front door’s knob. It turned and Bolan slipped inside, his silenced rifle up and ready to meet any challenge from within, but no one stopped him as he cleared a smallish entryway and moved along a short hall, toward the sound of reggae music. He had nearly reached a curtain made of colored beads when the expected outer guard appeared, clutching a sandwich in his right hand, a beer bottle in his left.

  The shock of being confronted by a man with a gun immobilized his adversary for a crucial second. Bolan took advantage of it, squeezing off a single shot that drilled the hungry man’s chest and punched him backward through the rattling curtain, toward the strains of island rhythm. Bolan followed, arriving just as the dead man’s companions registered his body flopping on the floor.

  Four of them leaped up from a card table where they’d been playing poker; two more bolted from a bar on Bolan’s right, reaching for weapons hidden underneath their baggy tie-dyed shirts. A seventh posse member was behind the bar, cracking a beer, but he dropped it when he noticed the intruder and his automatic rifle.

  Time does not slow down in combat. Quite the opposite, in fact. When the smoke clears, survivors may have only fragmentary memories of what they did, or who they killed, in order to survive. Bolan, thanks to his long experience, saw everything that happened with a perfect clarity, but had no images of slow-mo tumbling corpses, bottles shattering artistically behind the bar, or any other tricks well-known from Hollywood.

  It was an ugly business, killing, and he did it very well.

  He had the Steyr set for 3-round bursts and made them count, beginning with the guy behind the bar, who had more cover and was reaching for a weapon. That target fell, surrounded by a drifting mist of blood, as Bolan turned to work the room, tracking from left to right and nailing others as they came. When he finished, there were nine rounds left in his translucent magazine, and pools of blood were spreading on the vinyl-covered floor, merging to form a single crimson lake. Of seven adversaries, only one had fired a shot, and that was wasted on the ceiling.

  When no one else appeared, Bolan took the time to move behind the bar and smash a number of the rum and whiskey bottles shelved there. Then he ignited their dribbling contents to produce a wall of hungry, hissing flame. He saw no sprinkler system—tag them with a violation of the building safety code—which would allow the fire to spread, and maybe find its way upstairs before some passerby raised an alarm.

  You wanted Armagideon, he thought. So, here it is.

  4

  Liberty City, Miami

  Winston Channer had gone to ground in Miami’s ghetto, surrounded by guards in a small house two blocks from Sherdavia Jenkins Peace Park. He had no idea who Sherdavia was, didn’t know his or her story, and did not care to hear it. Another victim of the race war, he assumed, whose pain could not compare with the throbbing ache in his arm and shoulder.

  Or the aching in his head, after he took the second bad-news call that night.

  A fire at Armagideon, with eight more soldiers dead, apparently cut down before they could defend
themselves. He cursed the men who’d let him down, together with the man or men who’d killed them, wishing they all stood before him now, and he could be the one who slaughtered them. A cane knife would be good for that. Perhaps a chain saw.

  Channer had been on the verge of calling Quarrie back, then stopped himself. His master clearly did not wish to hear from him until he’d atoned for his failures by killing or capturing Garcelle Brouard and the white man who’d rescued her—whoever he might be. Channer still had no clue on that score, nor the first idea of where he should begin his search.

  The pain meds helped, but Channer had begun to think they might dull his senses. Unfortunately, the drugs couldn’t erase his present worries—or the threat of agonizing death, if Quarrie thought Channer had failed him. He was trapped, it seemed, between one madman and another, with his only way to safety being through one or the other. And if Channer had to choose, he’d pick the white man as his adversary every time.

  So far, he’d imagined three distinct angles of attack. The first, hunting Garcelle Brouard, began with checking every place she was known to frequent. A team of soldiers was on the way to raid her flat, and if they didn’t find her there, they had a short list of alternatives to check. His men had been cautioned to leave no witnesses who could identify them to police.

  The second avenue was using Channer’s contacts in local law enforcement, officers who valued cash over their oath of office. That only helped him if the cops captured the white man he was searching for. It was always possible—though, frankly, he considered it unlikely.

  Finally, he could go after Jean Brouard directly, in a bid to prove himself once and for all. The hostage ploy had failed, but he might be able to eliminate Brouard before the Haitian mobster launched a full-scale retaliation toward the Viper Posse. That would be a victory Quarrie could not ignore. Channer would be in line for a promotion, maybe elevation to a high rank in the posse, back in Kingston.

  Not that he was anxious to depart from Florida, or the United States in general.

  Channer had been born and raised on a small island, in the depths of poverty, and he relished every moment he spent in plush American society. Even the country’s ghettos were a great improvement on the slums of Kingston, where he’d once roamed the streets like a wild animal, committing petty thefts to feed himself. Today, at home, he would be envied by the yardie boys still fighting to establish reputations.