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“And what else?”
“I won’t pretend to know all that your people suffered,” Bolan said, “although, I’ve seen enough man-made catastrophes to have at least a general idea. Israelis aren’t the only ones who’d like to nip these bastards in the bud.”
“Too late for that,” she said. “The old men I referred to have been living here, and living well, for fifty years.”
“I found that out for the first time, this week,” Bolan replied. “Your people must’ve known it—what? For years?”
“Decades,” she said. “It shames me to admit it, but we fight the battles that demand immediate attention. Eichmann was a symbol. Everybody knew his name and what he’d done. As for the rest, we had our Arab neighbors to contend with. No one gave much thought to aging Germans squatting in a jungle, halfway around the world.”
“One of your agents took a shot in 1995,” Bolan replied.
“You’re well informed. Then you must know what happened afterward.”
“The bombing and retaliation, right.”
“Of course. But I’m referring to the cover-up by leaders of the DAS, perhaps Colombia’s own president, himself. Who do you trust here, Mr. Cooper?”
He had given her the cover name, and now said, “Make it ‘Matt.’ And trust is earned where I come from.”
“You’ve met this one before?” she asked, nodding toward Guzman, huddled in the rear.
“I checked his references,” Bolan replied. “He hasn’t let me down, so far.”
“How did Herr Krieger and his men know you were coming to Colombia?”
“Who’s Krieger?” Bolan asked, buying some time to think about her question.
“Krieger, Horst Andreas,” she replied, as if reading the label on a file. “Until this evening, he was one of old man Dietrich’s young elite. But now you’ve killed him, I believe. At least, I didn’t, and he would have shot us both if he was still alive.”
“Blond guy, midtwenties, maybe six feet tall?”
“The classic Aryan,” Cohen said.
“You’ve seen the last of him.”
“Good riddance. I am satisfied to have eliminated Arne Rauschman and at least two of their mercenaries. It’s amazing, isn’t it? How people they despise as less than human still work for the Nazis, seek to curry favor with them? Truly, wonders never cease.”
“About this house of yours…”
She turned into a quiet residential street and then into a driveway two doors from the corner.
“As you say,” she said. “We’re here.”
GUZMAN WAS SILENT, for the most part, while she cleaned his wound with alcohol. It had to have burned like fury, but he clenched his teeth and swallowed any sounds of pain that tried to struggle free. Granted, there was a little moan when she applied the iodine, but nothing that should shame a man concerned about his macho image.
“That’s the worst of it,” she said. “I’ll stitch it now. Unfortunately, I have nothing for a local anesthetic.”
“Any whiskey? Rum? Tequila?” Guzman asked.
“Sorry. I have some wine.”
The wounded man looked glum. He shook his head. “No wine.”
The tall American watched as Cohen removed a curved needle from her first-aid kit and began to thread it. She had used it on herself once, closing up a razor slash in Paris, and she never traveled far without the means to clean and patch most wounds that did not call for major surgery.
“You’ve done this kind of thing before,” Bolan observed.
“It’s good to be prepared for an emergency,” she said.
“And use a Jericho sidearm. It sounded like the .40 caliber.”
“The .41 Action Express, in fact.”
“You like an edge,” he said.
“Whenever I can get one.”
“Still, it isn’t much for going up against an army.”
“You’re prepared to try it with an IMBEL .45,” she hastened to remind him.
“I was on my way to do some shopping when we got sidetracked.”
“That’s inconvenient. Can you still keep the appointment?”
Bolan glanced at his companion, Jorge Guzman, who responded with a cautious nod and said, “I will make the arrangements.”
“Maybe we should just surprise him,” Bolan said. “I’d hate to find another welcoming committee waiting on the doorstep.”
Guzman flared. “You think I told them where to find us? If you doubt me—”
“Chill out,” Bolan warned. “If I thought you were doubling on me, you’d be lying back there at the factory.”
“What, then?” Guzman asked, slightly mollified.
“There are too many leaks around this town. Make that, around this country. We don’t telegraph our moves from this point on. No tip-offs to our plan for friend or foe. We’ll drop in for the hardware when your dealer least expects it, and he won’t know where we’re going when we leave.”
Finished threading the needle, Cohen dipped it into alcohol and turned toward Guzman. He observed the needle, nodded grimly, and she went to work, distracting Guzman and herself with words.
“Krieger and Rauschman met you at the airport,” she reminded Bolan. “That means they were either following your friend here, or they knew beforehand when you would be landing.”
“I’d prefer the first choice,” Bolan said.
“Of course. In that case, they may not know who you are, or why you’re here in Bogotá. You’d have a chance—although a slim one—to surprise them, yet.”
“That’s still the plan,” Bolan replied.
“Americans are always optimistic.”
“Not Americans, in general,” he said. “I set a goal and do my best to reach it, after planning for the worst contingencies that I can think of.”
“Is it sometimes wiser not to try?” she asked.
“If you believe that,” Bolan challenged, “why aren’t you at home in Tel Aviv?”
“I go where I am sent,” she said. “And I was not sent here to storm Colonia Victoria.”
“You think I was?”
She shrugged, aware of Bolan watching her. Not only following the movements of her hands.
“I’m not a mind reader, of course,” she said. “But you impress me as a soldier, not a spy. I don’t think you were sent to simply build a dossier on Dietrich and his cronies.”
“No,” he said. “Were you?”
“I am supposed to gather evidence that can be used to blow his cover, as you say. Perhaps to shame the government that shelters him. Myself, I’m not convinced it will be an effective strategy. Colombians appear to have great tolerance for such embarrassment, and very little shame.”
“You went beyond your brief tonight,” Bolan observed.
“In a good cause, I hope.”
“So, when we’re finished here,” he said, “Jorge and I will get out of your hair.”
“You plan to walk?”
“Well, maybe you could drop us at a rental agency,” Bolan said, smiling ruefully.
“Maybe,” she told him, “I can do better than that.”
“SLOW DOWN,” the man in black advised his driver. “They’re already nervous, and you know they’re trigger-happy at the best of times.”
The driver slowed their black Mercedes to a crawl, passing between the rows of factories that smoked and fumed around the clock. Downrange, six cars with flashing lights on top surrounded three more vehicles, their headlights highlighting the damage suffered by those other cars. Armed men in quasi-military uniforms scurried around the scene, peering at bodies scattered on the ground.
“I see him,” said the driver as they neared the scene of orchestrated chaos.
“Yes,” the man in black replied. “I wondered if he’d come out at this hour, himself.”
“Maybe he hasn’t been home yet,” the driver said with a smirk. “You’ve seen his mistress, eh?”
“The new one? I’m surprised her parents don’t impose a curfew.”
“Would they dare?” the driver asked.
“You have a point. Stop here. Stay with the car. If anything goes wrong, get out at any cost and warn him.”
“Herr Hauptmann—”
“I order it!”
“Yes, sir!”
Of course, something already had gone wrong. If Krieger had completed his assignment as commanded, Otto Jaeger would be sleeping at the moment, maybe dreaming of his wives at home. Instead, he had to deal with corpses in the middle of the night and listen to Joaquin Menendez complain.
With one hand on the Walther P-5 compact pistol in his coat pocket, Jaeger approached the scowling DAS chief. There was no reason to think that he would need the gun tonight, but given the dramatic mood swings Menendez was famous for, it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.
Perhaps he’s crazy, Jaeger thought.
And said, “Good morning, Herr Director. It’s unfortunate that your subordinates disturbed you for a matter of this sort.”
“Unfortunate, you say? With eight men dead.”
Krieger’s whole team? It seemed impossible, but would explain why no one had called Jaeger to report their failure. There was no one left.
Jaeger was cautious in replying to Menendez. He might easily have said that eight dead meant a sluggish night for Bogotá, but he preferred not to antagonize Menendez. It was dangerous and unproductive.
“Only eight?” he asked instead.
“You were expecting more?”
“I had expected none at all,” Jaeger replied with perfect honesty. Krieger was good enough—had been—to simply make his targets disappear, unless there were examples to be made.
This night, it seemed, Krieger and Rauschman, with their native help, were the examples.
“May I view the bodies?” Jaeger asked Menendez.
The Colombian considered it, then dipped his chin in the affirmative. “Touch nothing.”
“That’s a promise.”
Jaeger left the DAS director, turning toward the shot-up vehicles. He needed to replace the Volkswagen and the Mercedes. Both of them were badly damaged, and it left him short of rolling stock in Bogotá. He had another Benz on hand, besides the one that had delivered him to this grim scene, and half a dozen motorcycles. Not enough for fifty men by any means.
Now forty-eight, he thought as he approached the nearest corpse.
The third car, facing toward the others, was a cheap Fiat, run-down even before it ran into a hail of bullets and expired. The relative positions of the cars told Jaeger that the Fiat’s driver had been taken by surprise, or else pursued here, where he turned to fight. The latter seemed more likely, but Jaeger supposed he’d never really know.
Jaeger found Rauschman sprawled between the Benz and the VW, lying on his back. A slug had entered through his left eye, taking out the right-rear portion of his skull. He looked surprised and vaguely guilty.
So you should, Jaeger thought. You have disappointed everyone.
Was there a Hell for failures? Jaeger didn’t know, and at the moment didn’t really care.
He checked the other corpses, walking all around the scene, crunching the spent brass underfoot. There were no bodies by the Fiat, no apparent blood, suggesting that his men had missed their targets, or at least had failed to wound them mortally.
“Where is the eighth?” he asked a DAS captain who’d followed him around the cars, watching his every move. “Herr Menendez said eight were killed, but there are only seven here.”
The captain grunted at him, turned and pointed to a nearby field littered with pieces of equipment someone had discarded but had never hauled away. Now Jaeger saw a solitary officer standing beside what seemed to be a mound of earth or pile of dirty rags dumped on the ground.
He left the captain, walked over to Krieger’s dusty corpse and crouched beside it.
