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  “There’s money and supplies at the backup safe house,” Bolan told her.

  “Money?” Rojas asked.

  “To hire guns, to get other cartels on your side. Just enough to bring down the SNC permanently, if you do it right. There are diagrams and tactical information there, too, to make you invaluable to the other groups.”

  “And what if I decide to take that money and run, instead?”

  “Sooner or later, the friends I have will pay a visit to Cali. And if you are unlucky enough to meet them, do yourself a favor and eat a bullet,” Bolan said.

  They were approaching an overpass and slowed as he drove beneath it, pausing at the curb. “Get moving. I have an ambush to set for Carbonez’s troops.”

  Rojas began to open the door but paused, locking eyes with him. Bolan knew she wanted to trust him, wanted to believe this wouldn’t end with her back in jail—or dead on the streets of Cali. He’d played his hand, but he couldn’t give her any guarantees. La Brujah would have to accept that and come to her own conclusions.

  “This plan will work best if I’m on my own,” Bolan said firmly. “Wait until I contact you, and then move on to the next location.”

  Rojas stepped out of the car but stuck her head back in before closing the door.

  “Kill them all,” she said. “Then come to me. We will finish Carbonez. Together.”

  Bolan pulled back into traffic and accelerated.

  The Executioner was throwing a housewarming party, and he planned to welcome his guests with his own brand of cleansing fire.

  * * *

  CARBONEZ STOOD IN the computer center at his offices, watching the live footage from the SNC’s unmanned aerial vehicle. It was a clone of the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle, with more than a few proprietary features stripped from its system. Even so, it was more than sufficient to keep track of La Brujah and her American friend.

  Carbonez frowned, arms crossed, his eyes unblinking as he tracked the moving sedan across the screen.

  At first, the Colombian kingpin had been wondering if this pair’s exploits had been exaggerated, if Macco’s crew and the street assassins had simply not been the ruthless, capable soldiers Carbonez believed them to be. But as he’d seen the assault on Herrera unfold, his doubts about the strength of his opposition began to fade.

  They’d managed to destroy three of the SNC’s helicopters. He’d lost six million dollars in an instant, and that was just from the Hueys. The MH-6 was worth another five-hundred thousand, give or take, for both the airframe and the powerful armaments. Not to mention all the vehicles they’d taken out with their grenade launchers. The destruction had been hard to sit through, but Carbonez was glad for the presence of the ScanEagle.

  Now, it was on the hunt, trailing the pair in their car. Wherever those two laid their heads—and they would need a rest, after the brutal battle they’d waged—he would find them and bring them down.

  Carbonez was getting tired of being on the defensive. This time, he wasn’t fucking around.

  “Sir?”

  Carbonez had been so lost in his thoughts and anger, he was startled by the drone operator’s voice. “What is it?”

  “They stopped under an overpass for a moment,” the man told him. “But they’re moving again.”

  “So what?” Carbonez asked.

  “We can either watch the overpass, or we can follow the car,” the operator explained. “As good as we have it with the ScanEagle, we can’t keep an eye on them both, if they split up.”

  The general focused in on the sedan as it merged with traffic on the other side of the overpass. “Keep it hovering there for a minute. We’ve got the make, model and general direction of the car. We can afford to drop it for a few minutes. Let’s see if one of them stayed behind.”

  The operator nodded.

  Could someone have seen the drone? The wingspan was just a little over ten feet, and operating over ten-thousand feet in the air, the ScanEagle was supposed to be low profile. It was highly unlikely that anyone would notice it with the naked eye. Not even a witch.

  “Coming up on two minutes,” the operator announced. Two minutes, and no one had emerged.

  But what kind of wait would that be to a woman who’d spent seven years in prison? Carbonez had been behind bars himself, and one thing that a person learned in prison was that you had to be patient. Waiting was your friend.

  The operator looked to Carbonez for confirmation, then pulled the drone off the overpass, swinging back toward the sedan.

  It didn’t take long for the operator to pinpoint the vehicle with the ScanEagle, and Carbonez took a deep, cleansing breath. His neck was stiff, shoulders aching from the tension of waiting for…what?

  Why would they separate? Why not just ditch the car, stick together, and shake the tail?

  Or would they split up in order to draw Carbonez and his men into yet another trap? The last time the SNC had thought they had the American and the Witch where they wanted them, it had ended in devastation. He couldn’t even hope to count the casualties, let alone the drugs and weapons stored at Herrera’s. The cost of this day alone could top ten million dollars.

  The decimation of Macco’s crew was another hemorrhage of money and manpower, and Carbonez was already hearing reports that opportunistic cartels were vying to secure that part of Cali for their own. All of El Tiburon’s efforts to maintain SNC control there had been for naught.

  Maddening.

  Carbonez stepped away from the monitors, brushing his fingers through his short hair.

  “That is how he does it,” Carbonez murmured.

  “Sir?”

  “That’s how he gets under the skin of his opponents. He plans ahead. He leaves what seem like glaring holes in his defenses, or tries to lull you into believing there’s a blind spot in his tactics. He exposes himself just enough to be a tantalizing target.”

  And once this American’s opponents stepped into the open, he turned the tables and slammed the jaws of his trap shut. When the man attacked, he used the momentum, the sloth of larger forces against themselves, and no matter how fast a small unit could adapt, none could move, or think, as quickly as this lone warrior.

  But so far, this man and his wicked ally didn’t seem to be aware of the drone following them. Luck might be with the SNC, and they wouldn’t be expecting Carbonez to summon up more forces so soon after the devastation at the livery.

  “All right, get some men up and ready for action,” Carbonez ordered the lieutenant who’d been standing by at the back of the room. “Who do we have that we can deploy against these two?”

  “I’ll get you a list. How big a force do you want to send?” the man asked.

  “How big can we assemble inside of an hour?” Carbonez shot back. “I want everyone, and I want all the firepower you can manage. I don’t care if we’ve got a hundred guys there—I want to use every bullet in our inventory. Every grenade. Every rocket. We’re not fucking around here.”

  “Right, sir.”

  The drone operator spoke up. “They stopped off at a bodega. La Brujah must be driving because the man got out of the passenger side and went in.”

  Carbonez leaned over the operator’s shoulder. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Probably getting provisions. They’d need water after being so close to so much flame.”

  Carbonez nodded. “Just see if you can spot the driver from the window.”

  * * *

  BOLAN’S SHOPPING TRIP was one of necessity. Heading into the bodega, his first order of business was to pick up a package of garbage bags and a roll of duct tape. He needed to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t alone in the sedan, so he had to make it look as if both he and Rojas were entering their safe house.

  It wouldn’t take long to inflate a couple of bags and tape them together to resemble a human form, and he’d throw a jacket on top to complete the effect. He glanced around the bodega and found a cheap baseball cap that would also help hide the mannequin’s true na
ture. Moving through the small shop, Bolan paused long enough to spot a shelf of wigs for women.

  “Excuse me,” Bolan asked the man behind the counter. “Can I purchase the foam heads as well as the wigs?”

  “Si,” the man said.

  Bolan chose the one that most resembled Rojas’s hair. From the ScanEagle footage, it would be almost impossible for the enemy to make out details like hair color, but Bolan figured he was better safe than sorry. He didn’t want to give Carbonez any grounds for suspicion.

  Next, Bolan surveyed the fridge full of cold drinks. He chose four large water bottles—he needed to hydrate after the heat and adrenaline of battle, but more importantly, he could use the empty bottles to give his dummy legs.

  Finally, he grabbed a pair of cheap plastic shoes and some pantyhose and carried his basket up to the cash.

  “Planning a party?” the clerk asked in Spanish, raising an eyebrow.

  “You have no idea,” Bolan answered, paying for his goods. “Thanks. Keep the change.”

  Bolan returned to the car, his supplies hidden in paper bags. He slid into the passenger seat. He’d left his jacket, sleeve stuffed with newspaper, leaning on the driver’s window to make it seem as if the car was occupied.

  Bolan tugged the jacket to one side and climbed in behind the wheel. The bags would take up space on the other seat, masking the lack of a passenger.

  Bolan drove away from the bodega, already scanning for another secluded spot to pull over. He needed time away from the drone’s watchful eye to assemble his dummy. Another overpass loomed ahead, and once beneath it, Bolan cut the engine. He stuffed the panty hose, first with the plastic shoes to form feet, then drank one bottle of water and emptied the others. He slid them into the nylon legs, applying duct tape to keep everything together. Then he blew into a garbage bag, forming a “torso” about the size of Rojas’s, and attached the limbs.

  He added the foam head, wig and baseball cap using more tape. The jacket went around her “shoulders.”

  When the SNC came knocking, they would be expecting two people.

  And Bolan planned to give them an easy target.

  13

  The ScanEagle lived up to its name, giving Carbonez and his troops a sharp, bird’s-eye view of the safe house. It was out past the shanty towns and close to the river. Few people lived in this area because of all the sewage and refuse that flowed out of Cali and ended up here.

  The safe house was an isolated little building by the water. No civilians were likely to wander out this way, and the general was glad for that. The Soldados enjoyed a certain amount of public support because their war was with the Colombian government, in all its corruption and incompetence. Openly engaging in violence against Cali’s citizens would only damage the SNC’s standing with the folks who had been there to shield him, and would be again. Though Carbonez didn’t give a flying shit about these people, their loyalty was too useful a resource to squander.

  Carbonez watched the sedan pull up to the house. The American exited the passenger seat and walked to the driver’s side, lifting…well, obviously that was the woman, no? She appeared to have been injured during the fight, though that hadn’t been apparent in the wake of the battle. The details of their exfiltration had been obscured by the smoke pouring from wrecked vehicles and the crumbled livery building.

  The man was supporting her as they walked toward the front door, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “So that’s why they stopped at the bodega for supplies,” Carbonez said. “He wanted to give her first aid in the car. I guess her driving ability wasn’t hindered…”

  “No,” the drone operator said. “But she might have taken a shot to the leg. An injury in one leg wouldn’t have impaired her driving ability, and that would have explained some of the long stops as he treated her.”

  Carbonez wished he could see their faces better, but the resolution from fifteen-thousand feet was only so good.

  “We’ve sent exact coordinates and routes to the field team,” the operator told Carbonez. “We’ll keep an eye on the house, just in case someone leaves, or if they seem to be fortifying against an attack. So far, they haven’t shown any sign that they’ve spotted the ScanEagle or that they’re headed home to do anything but rest and recuperate.” The operator hesitated. “Will you be…going in with them?” he asked.

  Carbonez frowned. He wanted to be a part of this attack, but his days of being a frontline commander were long past. He was no longer in his prime, or even close. Still, there were things he could do from here as easily as he could on site.

  “No,” he answered. “I wish, though. It would be glorious. This will have to be my seat for the show.”

  The operator nodded.

  Carbonez kept his eyes on the safe house. The American and the Witch were in his crosshairs now, and he didn’t dare blink.

  The American knew how to draw in his enemies, make them push to the limits of their attack, and then blindside them. Carbonez had to watch from afar. That had its benefits. The ScanEagle would be the closest he could ever get to being an omniscient battlefield observer. With the communications at this command center, he could steer and manipulate the war against these two interlopers.

  And the best part of all? The American had placed himself exactly where Carbonez wanted him. The general had no compunctions about cutting loose with everything he had.

  * * *

  MACK BOLAN DUMPED his mannequin just inside the door and slammed it shut. The shades were already drawn. He went back out and moved the car into the carport, which was made from scrap siding that had washed up on the shore of the Cauca River.

  Bolan glanced out across the sluggish water. Real estate along the Cauca’s banks was not much sought after. Over half a dozen gold mines emptied their silt and waste into the river, and at the end of the millennium, the SNC’s predecessors had engaged in a killing spree under the guise of “cleansing.”

  The name of this atrocity was Cali limpia, Cali linda—Clean Cali, Beautiful Cali—and thousands of prostitutes, homeless people, street children and homosexuals had been callously murdered and dumped into the river. Cities had gone broke from the cost of retrieving bodies and conducting autopsies.

  Bolan was fully aware of Cali’s trials and tribulations, the nation of Colombia beset by narcotics-funded terrorism and civil unrest. He’d been here many times, and sometimes it seemed that, no matter how much of a dent he put in the hordes of gunmen and thugs, there was always some group of maniacs bringing torment and ruin to honest, innocent people.

  He was reminded of a saying about baby alligators in a swamp. Though they would eventually grow to become dominant, apex predators, the gators started out in huge clutches of eggs, and when they hatched, they were the smallest, easiest prey in the wetlands. They grew up avoiding being eaten by bigger creatures, and by the time they reached adulthood, the reptiles had learned only one lesson. Eat or be eaten. The surviving gators made up for the fear and terror inflicted upon them by devouring everything that had tried to eat them when they were small.

  Bolan knew the cycle of violence was difficult, almost impossible, to break. And Colombia wasn’t the only corner of the world crippled by corruption, suffering and brutality. Poverty, shattered families, the cycle of predation was something that required so much more than a carefully placed .44 Magnum or a packet of C-4. Colombia needed an honest government, better education and jobs for everyone. But Bolan had his own part to play in weeding out the evil in this country, and he would see it through to the end.

  Any Soldados who survived this conflict would relate the horrors of their encounter with the Executioner, passing on the details of his lethal crusade as a warning to others who would dare follow in the SNC’s footsteps.

  Bolan checked the laser trip wires that he’d set around the perimeter of the property, one of the reasons that he felt comfortable with fully drawn curtains. Satisfied, he returned to the house.

  Once inside, he took out his
PDA and sent a text to Stony Man.

  Expecting company en masse. Need eyes in the sky.

  Either Kurtzman would make use of a spy satellite watching South America, or he’d commandeer one of Colombia’s legitimate ScanEagle drones to provide real-time information on what was approaching.

  In the meantime, Bolan was prepared. He’d brought in both of the Milkor MGLs as well as his M-203-equipped M4 carbine. He wanted as much of a force equalization as he could get, and there was nothing like 40 mm packages of high explosives to balance the odds between one man and a deadly army.

  The M4 and its launcher would be strapped across his back. He’d load one MGL with buckshot rounds, turning the launcher into a 40 mm shotgun, belching out a swarm of hundreds of quarter-inch pellets in a flesh-shredding wave of damnation. He’d fill the other with fragmentation rounds.

  Bolan went to what would have been the laundry room and quickly pulled out two panels from the lower part of the wall. There was a tunnel behind that, which led into a drainage ditch that Bolan and Rojas had spent their first day transforming into a camouflaged passageway. Using tarps and a lattice of sticks and boards, they’d covered the ditch and then spread and smoothed out dirt to make it hard to see. Bolan bagged up the MGLs and his M4 and crawled out to the river’s edge where there was plenty of scrub and brush to hide in. From there, he could flank and ambush the assault force moving in on the safe house.

  He darted quickly back through the tunnel and reentered the safe house.

  “Cooper?” It was Bolan’s hands-free set, Rojas calling him.

  “You got some news for me from that radio you borrowed?” Bolan asked.

  “And then some,” Rojas said. “The chatter might have been a bit fast for you to follow…”

  “You noticed.”

  Rojas chuckled. “Basically, you’re going to have about a hundred visitors, and they’ve been told to make certain that the safe house is turned to sawdust before they dare to make a move on it.”

  “I figured as much,” Bolan returned.