Blood Rites Read online

  Or, on the other hand, perhaps Garcelle would play it straight.

  The odds? Bolan could not have said.

  And if the lady had betrayed him? What, then?

  Bolan was practical. He didn’t draw a line at killing women, if they posed a mortal threat to him or others. Enemies were enemies, regardless of their gender, race, or creed.

  He hoped Garcelle would not be one of those, but if she’d laid a snare for him, she’d have to take her chances with the Executioner.

  * * *

  ABNER BIASSOU HATED WAITING. He’d always been an action-oriented guy. He took what he wanted when he wanted it and messed up anyone who tried to stop him. Now, of course, he was a captain with responsibility. Which made it all the more irksome to be staked out in darkness, lying on his belly with a rifle at his side, watching the boss’s daughter sitting at a bus stop in the middle of the night.

  For what?

  As Abner understood it, some white man had saved Garcelle from almost certain death—torture at least, since the Viper Posse was renowned for it—and had annihilated twenty-odd of Winston Channer’s men. He thought they should be cheering the anonymous commando, standing back to let him wipe out Channer and the other Kingston sons of whores rather than assassinating him.

  Why help the enemy by taking out a man hell-bent on killing them? It made no sense.

  But Papa Jean had not consulted him. It was his way to issue orders, and subordinates who failed to execute them properly would feel his wrath. Biassou had received instructions to eliminate the white man, and his sole response had been Yes, sir.

  He hadn’t come alone, of course. Considering the stranger’s prowess, Abner had handpicked seven men to join him on the stakeout, each a proven killer who’d served with Haiti’s army or its national police. Not simpleminded grunts, but men who’d seen it all, from grilling prisoners to riot duty and eliminating opposition at election time.

  The members of his team were similarly armed, each with an automatic weapon and at least one pistol, all connected to Biassou by their wireless headsets, ready to receive his orders when the time was right.

  Assuming the white man even showed.

  Garcelle appeared to think she had the stranger at her beck and call, although she’d only met him briefly and couldn’t really claim to know the man at all. He had agreed to meet her, some scheme about protective custody, but Abner thought it was a fifty-fifty shot that he would change his mind, decide she wasn’t worth the trouble.

  After all, he did have other things to do.

  The Viper Posse had been wounded, but it still survived. Garcelle was a distraction. Would a true professional allow himself to be diverted from a mission by a stranger’s plea for help?

  Biassou checked his Rolex watch. Garcelle’s savior had five minutes left before they had to mark him down as tardy.

  Abner had inquired how long they ought to linger in the park, if he was late. He’d asked the boss, refusing to accept Garcelle as his commander, even though he treated her with all due honor. Papa Jean had ordered that they wait for half an hour, making an allowance for the white man getting lost or stuck in traffic. They could pull out then, if he hadn’t arrived, and take Garcelle back home.

  Biassou hoped the night might end that way. He didn’t like to see a woman rising to direct the family, no matter if she was intelligent and coldhearted. Crime was a man’s world, and he wanted it to stay that way.

  How else could Abner hope to claim his due as leader of the syndicate, when Death eventually called on Papa Jean?

  A movement on the far side of the street alerted him. Was that a figure in the shadows, peering at Garcelle?

  “Wake up,” he whispered to his men. “We may have something here.”

  * * *

  GARCELLE BROUARD WAS NERVOUS. This waiting on the street had started to unnerve her—which, in turn, had made her irritable, angry at herself. She hated those feelings, but found that tonight, she couldn’t control them.

  Waiting sucked.

  Garcelle was starting to second-guess herself, and that was not a quality of leadership. She listened for Biassou’s warning, wondered whether he would spot Cooper before she did—or if the man would even show at all.

  He’ll be here, she decided. Garcelle trusted him to that extent, and wondered if his trust in her was strong enough to lead him to his death.

  What others would have seen as treachery, Garcelle viewed as a test of character. Her father was observing her, considering her argument that leadership of their criminal family should not be dependent on whether or not the leader possessed testicles. She had cajoled, debated, argued with her father for five years, at least, trying to make him see the light. Over the past twelve months, she’d noted cracks in his traditionalist facade, small signs of progress for her side. Tonight would show him she possessed the final quality required to help him lead.

  “Making her bones,” Italian mobsters called it, or were rumored to. Killing a man of Matthew Cooper’s prowess, never mind his real name, would be vastly more impressive than eliminating some street thug who’d trespassed against the family. And killing him after he’d saved her life? That was the icing on the cake.

  She listened for Biassou’s warning, slipped a hand into the pocket of her raincoat, where the Heckler & Koch P2000 SK nestled snugly, a round in its chamber, ten in the clip. She carried two spare magazines, as well, but knew that if she needed them, she’d probably be dead before she could reload.

  Cooper appeared to be a gentleman, for all his taciturnity, but Garcelle thought he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she missed her own first shot. He might be soft where women were concerned, but he was not a fool.

  Biassou’s voice rasped in her ear. “Wake up. We may have something here.”

  No cars were coming. She looked across the street, toward Town Park. There, immersed in shadows cast by trees, she saw a human figure. Watching her? And if so, was it Cooper?

  Criminals were known to haunt Miami’s parks, like those of every other city. This could be a mugger, and she nearly smiled, thinking about the rude surprise he’d get if he attacked her at the bus stop. It would spoil the trap she’d laid for Cooper, sadly, but it might be fun.

  The figure on the far side of the street was moving now, emerging from the shadows, stepping toward the curb. Cooper. Of course, it was. She saw him stop and look both ways, the way children were taught to do with traffic, but she knew his eyes were scanning Williams Park, looking for evidence that she’d betrayed him.

  Then he began to cross the street.

  * * *

  BOLAN WAS HALFWAY across Northwest 17th Street when Garcelle rose from the bus stop bench and came to meet him on the sidewalk. She was smiling, seemed to have no luggage other than a purse over her shoulder, hands inside the pockets of a lightweight coat that stopped just above her knees.

  “I was afraid you’d change your mind,” she said.

  Bolan kept looking past her, sharp eyes probing shadows. Nodding toward her shoulder bag, he asked, “That’s all you’re bringing?”

  “It’s enough,” she said, losing the smile as she began to draw a pistol from her right-hand pocket.

  Bolan had a fraction of a second to decide. He chose to let her live, butt-stroked her gun hand with the Steyr’s polymer stock, using force enough to crack her wrist and send the weapon clattering across concrete. He lunged to grab her hair, wedged the rifle’s silencer beneath her jaw and was just about to ask for an explanation when a shout went up from somewhere deeper in the park, behind the nearby screen of trees.

  Men running, moving shadows in the deeper darkness. Bolan shoved Garcelle away from him. She stumbled, went down on her backside as he crouched and brought the auto rifle to his shoulder.

  Muzzle-flashes made it easier for him to spot his enemies. The nearest of the gang was twenty yards away and closing, firing on the run, which spoiled his aim. Bolan triggered a 3-round burst that caught the shooter in midstride and knocked h
im backward, finger still clamped on his weapon’s trigger, wasting bullets on the velvet sky and stars above.

  One down, but now the others had begun to find their range. A streetlight halfway down the block worked against Bolan, and the open sidewalk offered him no cover. If he ran now, back across the empty two-lane road, he likely wouldn’t make it to the smaller park, much less his waiting car.

  So, stand and fight.

  He counted seven shooters still in action, figured that was all of them. No one who wanted to impress the boss would hang back on the sidelines. Garcelle was crawling toward her pistol, ducking underneath the friendly fire. Bolan suppressed an urge to pick her off and focused on the soldiers who were closing in on him.

  No time to wonder why she had betrayed him. Maybe it was simply in her blood. He made a mental note to call on Garcelle’s daddy, if he lived that long, then got down to the brutal business of survival.

  Soldier two had nearly reached the sidewalk when a second 3-round burst from Bolan’s AUG stitched him above the belt line, 5.56 mm NATO manglers tumbling and fragmenting as they penetrated solid flesh. The bullets were designed to cause massive internal injuries—cavitation, in clinical lingo—and drop a target in his tracks. Bolan had seen the gross effects in training films and in the flesh.

  Like now.

  Garcelle had covered half the distance to her fallen pistol, favoring her right wrist as she crawled across the sidewalk. Wild rounds from one of her father’s flunkies cracked concrete in front of her, and while she flinched, she also kept going.

  Take her now? Or wait until she reached the gun?

  The new front-runner for the Haitian skirmish line had almost cleared the sidewalk’s grassy verge, rounding the bench Garcelle had occupied until a moment earlier. He stopped there, dropping to one knee and lining up his shot, an elbow on top of the bench’s armrest to provide stability.

  Too late.

  Bolan already had him lined up in the Steyr’s telescopic sight, stroking the rifle’s trigger, blowing him away. He thought the dead man had a vaguely stunned expression on his face, something the Executioner had seen before.

  And something he would see again.

  * * *

  ABNER BIASSOU HAD BEEN ordered not to interfere while Garcelle killed the white man, to intervene only if she failed. He’d been watching when she drew her pistol and the stranger easily disarmed her, seemed about to take her hostage—or at least interrogate her—when he knew it was time to move.

  “Close in!” he commanded, leaping to his feet and wobbling for a heartbeat, then finding his stride. He heard the others running, some already closer to the target than Biassou was. He saw the white man shove Garcelle, knocking her down, and barked another order through his Bluetooth headset.

  “Kill him! But be careful of the girl!”

  One of his men—he thought it might be Janjak—fired a short burst at the enemy and missed. The white man wasted no time in returning fire, taking Biassou’s soldier down.

  “Damn!”

  Biassou raised his weapon, an M4 carbine fitted with a vertical foregrip and an Aimpoint CompM2 sight. He tried to aim while running, but everything was a blur, with the red dot dancing like a cat toy’s laser beam.

  He lurched to a halt, saw a second member of his ambush party falling to his left, and took a moment to line up his shot. The white man had hunched down, was moving, making it more difficult, but Abner reckoned he could do this, get full credit for it, and perhaps reap some reward.

  Another second, now. His index finger curled around the carbine’s trigger, taking up the slack, his right eye peering through the CompM2’s reticle. He saw the red dot waver, then lock tight onto the white man’s chest. The sight did not emit a laser beam, so his target was unaware, dropping a third man, oblivious to Death approaching.

  Biassou squeezed the M4’s trigger—and felt his heart stop as Garcelle leaped from the sidewalk, lurching up into his line of fire, pistol in hand. His bullets cut into her from behind, making her stumble, spin around. There was time for her to blink at him, astounded, just before she fell.

  Biassou felt the scream rising inside him, ripping from his throat before he could contain it. As she dropped, he knew his life was over, could imagine how her father would react, exacting vengeance by the slow and agonizing hour, likely days on end, until Biassou prayed for death and met it as a blessing.

  Howling like a berserker in the night, he charged the white man. Incoherent, barely conscious, he barked orders, curses, insults to his soldiers through the Bluetooth headset, firing from the hip with his M4. He wished the rifle’s magazine had tracers in it, so he could watch the bullets strike his target, maybe set the man afire, but all he saw was agile movement, his intended victim rolling to one side and popping up again, his weapon sighting on Biassou.

  When the bullets struck him, spalling on impact with his ribs and sternum, fragments shearing through his heart, lungs, liver, stomach, it was almost a relief. Biassou tripped over his own feet, fell into the darkness waiting for him and was gone.

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD NO TIME to consider Garcelle dying on the sidewalk, almost at his feet. The man who’d cut her down was charging at him, firing, wailing like a wounded animal, and he had only seconds to hit him with another of the Steyr’s muffled bursts, dropping his corpse almost atop the woman’s.

  Four more enemies still in the game, and they were closing on him now, after a moment’s hesitation when Garcelle was shot. Not something they’d expected, obviously, but they had to make the best of it, couldn’t go back to Jean Brouard saying they’d lost his daughter and the man she’d come to kill. For them, survival hinged on taking Bolan down, and they were giving it their best shots, literally, automatic weapons chattering.

  He couldn’t run, had no cover to speak of, so he dropped and rolled. Bullets hummed through the air above him like a swarm of insects pumped on steroids, poorly aimed in the excitement and confusion of the moment, but still lethal. Bolan fired, rolled, fired and rolled again, trusting his instincts and the AUG’s Swarovski Optik to put his rounds on target.

  The nearest shooter ran into a triple-tap of 5.56 mm shockers. Dying on his feet and vaulting backward through a clumsy sort of somersault, he was left twisted on the pavement, facing back the way he’d come, quivering in time with the blood pulsing from his fatal wounds.

  The next Haitian in line witnessed his comrade falling, ducked and sidestepped in a hasty reflex action, but it couldn’t save him. Bolan took him with a rising burst, the first round drilling him above the navel, two and three striking his solar plexus and his throat, respectively. The world’s best body armor would not have protected him, and he was wearing none. No two men die exactly the same way, however, and this soldier toppled forward, kissed the sidewalk with a crack of breaking teeth and cartilage, his weapon trapped and stuttering beneath him, sending bullets east along the sidewalk.

  Doing part of Bolan’s job, as it turned out. The stray slugs hacked through a man’s legs before he had a chance to duck or dodge. The wounded Haitian screamed, went down as if someone had yanked a rug from under him, but clearly wasn’t finished yet.

  Another burst from Bolan’s AUG accomplished that, cutting the wounded soldier’s face to shreds and shattering his skull. The headless Haitian toppled over backward, arms flung out as if preparing for a crucifixion, bleeding out from both ends.

  Only one remained, and he was hesitating now, aware that he’d been left alone to face the man his team had marked down as an easy kill. He hissed at Bolan, turned as if to flee, and managed two long strides before a silent burst slapped home between his shoulder blades, giving him wings for all the time it took to execute a nosedive, tumbling on the grassy verge.

  Sirens.

  Bolan was out of time and he knew it, rising from the pavement, turning back toward Town Park and the Mercury Marauder waiting for him there. He left nine bodies scattered on the grass and sidewalk, dark blood pooling, forming abstra
ct patterns as it spread. Police would send the message home to Jean Brouard, and Bolan thought he just might leave it there. Not out of any sympathy for him or for Garcelle, but to concentrate on why he’d traveled to Miami in the first place.

  It was time to finish with the Viper Posse there, and then move on.

  6

  Liberty City, Miami

  Winston Channer listened to the news report and wondered what to make of it. His men were not the ones who’d been killed, this time, and while that pleased him, still he was confused. The blonde on his television screen said eight men had been killed at Williams Park, along with a woman identified as Garcelle Brouard, daughter of “a reputed Haitian mobster.”

  What in hell was happening?

  On one hand, Channer was relieved. When it got back to Kingston, Quarrie might believe he was responsible and give him credit for rebounding from his wounds and settling one score, at least. It could make matters worse, if he found out the truth, but who would tell him?

  An idea struck Channer and made his stomach churn. What if Quarrie himself had done this thing? There’d been ample time for posse reinforcements to reach Miami—just under two hours in actual flight time from Kingston—but how could Quarrie have arranged the ambush? He was clever, certainly—and some said magical—but even with Obeah working for him, was it possible?

  Channer thought not, which left the problem he’d started with.

  Who was responsible, and why?

  He’d thought of leaving, simply bailing out and running for his life, but that idea stalled out when he considered destinations. Anyplace on Earth with a Jamaican population left him vulnerable to the Viper Posse; on the other hand, if there were no Jamaicans in the spot he chose, he would stand out and draw attention to himself, bringing the hunters down upon him.

  And there could be no mistake: Quarrie would track him down, intent on vengeance, if he ran.