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Bolan snaked down out of the sunroof. He reached over the seat and hauled LeCaesar back inside. He had half a heartbeat to ram his feet against the floorboards and slam his free hand against the roof as the brights from another pickup roared out of a side street and lit up Vector 1 like stalag lights. “Brace for impact!”
The cartel pickup hit them broadside.
Smiley swore and took a brutal head bounce that cracked her window. Nigris screamed. LeCaesar and the prisoner tumbled around the backseat like two rag dolls thrown in on spin cycle. Bolan gritted his teeth as glass from his shattered window flew in his face. He lost his grip on the roof, and blood spurted from his hand as it sheared away the dome light. His stomach lurched as the Bronco went up on two wheels. Smiley gasped as it landed on its side and Bolan landed on top of her. Grenades and spare mags were everywhere. A frag spun like a top on the edge of the center armrest. Bolan grabbed it. He was risking a burn if gasoline was leaking, but he could hear boots pounding the pavement. As bullets began rattling against the overturned truck he pulled the pin with a bloody hand and tossed the grenade up and out of the shattered passenger window. “Frag out!”
Someone outside yelled ¡Granada! and the shouts turned to screams as the grenade spewed shrapnel in all directions. LeCaesar crawled out the sunroof dragging a mewling Nigris with him. Bolan grabbed his rifle and a bandolier and helped push the prisoner’s limp body out the sunroof. Smiley blinked and gasped. Bolan grabbed her and hauled her out of the Bronco. He reached back inside and pulled her carbine out of its rack.
“Smiley! You all right?” The agent stared at Bolan out of a mask of blood. Her left eyebrow was hanging off her face. Bolan held up his middle finger. “How many you see?”
“Screw you!” Smiley replied.
Bolan shoved her carbine into her arms. “You’re gonna be all right!”
LeCaesar slapped Nigris forehand and back, but the killer seemed catatonic. Bolan didn’t think it had much to do with the crash. LeCaesar made a terrible face as he tossed the prisoner across his shoulders like a sack of corn. The PFP agent was hurt. Bolan jacked a fresh grenade into his launcher. “Mole!”
“¡De nada!” Mole rose to his feet with a groan. “Go! Go! Go!”
Bolan looked up the street. A rocket attack had left Vector 2 a burning hulk. It didn’t look as if anyone had gotten out. Behind them Vector 3 had left the last enemy SUV riddled like Swiss cheese. Bolan slung one of Smiley’s arms over his shoulder and clicked his com unit. “Vector 3! We need you!”
“Copy that!”
“Control! This is Vector 1! Convoy under heavy attack! Vector 3 vehicle damaged! Package intact! Vector 2 is gone with all aboard! Repeat! Vector 2 is gone!”
“Copy that, Vector 1.” The voice of the DEA controller in California was grim. “Helicopter inbound. Sending Vector 3 extraction route now!”
Vector 3 came roaring up the block victoriously. A dark blue Ford F-150 came screaming down the road to meet them. Instincts honed in battle on every continent on earth roared up and down Bolan’s spine. “Vector 3! Abort! Take evasive action! Get out of here!”
“Negative Vector 1!” DEA agents sprouted out of the windows of Vector 3 and fire chattered from the muzzles of their carbines. They tore forward in an eight-cylinder, automatic-weapon jousting match. “We don’t leave people behind!”
The enemy wasn’t jousting. They were playing chicken, and Bolan’s guts told him they weren’t going to blink. Bolan dropped Smiley and brought up his rifle as the Ford flew by. Fire strobed from the muzzle and spent casings flew as he held the trigger down on full-auto, ripping the Ford’s rear tires. Vector 3 realized a heartbeat too late what the Ford’s intentions were. Vector 3 swerved at the last second, and the F-150 turned to meet them.
The vehicles collided head-on at a combined speed of over 100 mph.
The DEA men firing out of the windows of Vector 3 snapped like kindling from the impact. The assassin riding shotgun in the Ford flew through his windshield like a rocket of flesh and blood and plowed through Vector 3’s windshield, as well. The two 4x4s bounced apart like mountain goat rams that had crippled each other with one apocalyptic hit. Both vehicles were crumpled like tin cans. Bolan’s blood went cold as he reloaded and slapped his rifle’s bolt into battery. No one was getting out of either vehicle. Drug muscle wasn’t known for going kamikaze. Something was terribly wrong. “We gotta go. We gotta go now.”
“Jesus…” Smiley used her carbine to lever herself up.
LeCaesar groaned beneath Nigris’s deadweight.
“Give him to me.”
LeCaesar snarled. Nigris was still officially his prisoner until he was handed over to U.S. authorities. “Go!”
Bolan clicked his com. “Control, this is Vector 1. All convoy vehicles disabled. Vector 3 is gone. Package intact. We need extraction now or nev—”
Two Mercury Grand Marquis, one black, one brown, both with tinted windows, cruised down the street. They weren’t suicide sleds like the first wave of attack. They were cruising slow, prowling, the clean-up squad. “Bree, Mole, we got company.”
“Jesus!” Smiley flipped her carbine’s selector lever to full-auto. “How many of these guys are there?”
Too many, Bolan thought. He led his team down a side street as the two sedans slid around the burning hulk of Vector 2. They ducked down one narrow street and then another. The streets turned into alleys and barrios swiftly turned into unlighted, two-story adobes, huddled together with dirt for streets and lines of laundry stretched between them. The stars and a few strands of Christmas lights were the only light save occasional votive candles on stoops. Nigris squeaked as he tipped off LeCaesar’s back and landed in a fetid puddle. The agent’s weapon clattered as the man dropped to his hands and knees. Bolan kept an eye on the maze as Smiley dropped to a knee beside the Mexican agent. “You okay, amigo?”
LeCaesar mumbled in Spanish that it was nothing and he was fine. Then he threw up. Smiley wiped his chin and grimaced at the dark stain on her hand. “He got busted up in the crash. He’s bleeding inside. We need to call—”
“We don’t call anybody.”
“What do you mean—”
“I mean all bets are off.” Bolan turned off his com. “I don’t trust anybody but you and him.”
LeCaesar pushed himself to his knees and wiped blood from his chin. “The gringo is right. We trust no one.”
Bolan cocked his head at Smiley. “How come she’s not a gringa?”
LeCaesar rose with her help. “She’s mexicana honoraria.”
“How do I get to be an honorary Mexican?”
The agent flashed bloody teeth. “You have made progress tonight.”
“Great. Can I have Cuah’s keys?”
LeCaesar’s smile fell from his face. “That man is a killer and a cannibal. I am not so sure that is a good idea.”
“I don’t want to carry him and you can’t.” Bolan shrugged. “Just his legs. So he can haul his own freight.”
The agent looked at Smiley, who nodded. LeCaesar agreed. “Sí.” He pulled a dog-tag chain bearing handcuff keys from beneath his armor.
Bolan unlocked Nigris’s hobble and leaned in close. “Don’t even think about it.” Nigris whimpered. Bolan could smell the fear on him sweating through his clothes, and he didn’t like it at all.
“Mole, I thought this guy was supposed to be a genuine badass.”
“He is.” LeCaesar didn’t like it either. “Or at least he was.”
Bolan hauled Nigris to his feet. “We need to find a vehicle.”
LeCaesar grabbed Nigris by the scruff of the neck and jammed his weapon in his back. “The next main street is that way.”
Headlights suddenly flared to brights as if on cue. The black sedan filled the narrow alleyway the way they had come. Smiley and LeCaesar opened up. Sparks walked across the Mercury’s hood and bullets chipped glass. “They’re armored!” Smiley shouted. Brights hit them from the other end of the alley and they were pinned between the rapidly closing bumpers. Bolan was out of antiarmor rounds for his grenade launcher.
Nigris broke free of LeCaesar and ran screaming down the alley, waving his arms. “¡Maricon!” the agent snarled, but he wasn’t willing to shoot his suspect.
“Cuah!” Bolan roared.
The black sedan accelerated. Nigris froze like a deer and the vehicle ran him down. He flew ten feet and the Mercury followed, grinding him to paste beneath its wheels. Both sedans advanced, putting Bolan, Smiley and LeCaesar in the big squeeze. The two agents fired without effect. There was nowhere to go. Bolan pulled a high-explosive grenade. Most civilian vehicle armor jobs were armored in the windows and body panels. Only the highest end military and diplomatic vehicles’ undersides were mine-proofed.
Bolan pulled the pin and went bowling for bad guys.
He counted down one second of fuse time and underhanded the grenade down the alley. It bounced beneath the bumper of the oncoming brown Mercury. The front of the Marquis lifted higher than any low-rider dared dream as the undercarriage was annihilated. “C’mon!”
Bolan was already charging. The sedan behind them roared with acceleration. The Executioner burned half his clip into the stricken Marquis’s windshield from the hip-assault position. He leaped onto the hood and helped up his companions. “Go!” They slipped over the hood and down the trunk. Bolan turned toward the oncoming juggernaut and emptied his weapon into the windshield. His rifle clacked open on a smoking empty chamber as the sedan hurtled in. Bolan jumped.
The brown sedan beneath his boots disappeared backward and was replaced by a black one. Metal flew. The black Mercury slammed to a stop and Bolan landed on the hood. The occupants were barely discernable behind the tinted glass. He reloaded his rifle and began to fire into the driver’s side point-blank. The twenty steel-core rounds bit into the armored glass, the last five punching through.
Bolan pulled his last frag, armed it and shoved the bomb through the coffee-cup-diameter hole his rifle rounds had dug.
The interior of the Mercury flashed yellow, then sprayed red; it filled with scything shrapnel with nowhere to go. Bolan reloaded his rifle, jumped down and clambered across the shattered vehicle. Smiley and LeCaesar were street side, and he trotted up and joined them. No cars were immediately in sight. Bolan took out his phone and made a called the Farm.
Back in Virginia, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered on the first ring. “Striker! Where are you? We’ve been monitoring the DEA com link. It’s blowing up, and Tijuana looks like a war zone.”
“We were made the second we left the safe house. We’re down eight DEA men and we lost the package. We got our hats handed to us, Bear, and right now I got a federale in real bad shape. I need you to vector me to a hospital, and I don’t want to meet bad guys, federales or anybody else on the way.”
“That’s going to be easier said than done. I have the real-time feed from the satellite the DEA is using. The streets are swarming with cops and soldiers. All Mexican police and federal frequencies are blowing up.”
“I figured.” Bolan glanced at a manhole. “Pull up a schematic of the Tijuana sewer system. I’m extracting underground.”
“Interesting.” Bolan could hear keys clicking on the Kurtzman’s side. “Give me a minute.”
“Copy that.” Bolan broke cover and walked over to the manhole. It looked as if it hadn’t been moved in years. It was baked into the street, and he didn’t have time to wrestle with it. The Executioner pulled an offensive grenade from his bandolier, pulled the pin and dropped the bomb. “Fire in the hole!” He ran back to the car and slid across the hood to cover. The night flashed orange. People in their homes screamed and every dog in the neighborhood started barking. Bolan rose from cover followed by his battered team. The manhole cover was gone and the hole it had covered had been somewhat enlarged. “You got something for me, Bear?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about sewer reception with your rig, so I’m just going to download the route to your phone. You’ll be on your own until you surface.”
“Copy that.” Smoke rolled out of the hole but even the acrid smell of burned high explosive couldn’t cover the septic stench that awaited them down in the darkness. Bolan watched as a dull green grid of lines began to scroll on the screen of his phone. His route suddenly highlighted in red. “Got it. Bree, Mole, c’mon.”
Smiley and LeCaesar limped to the hole and both of them wrinkled their noses in unison.
“Shit,” the DEA agent said.
“Mierda,” LeCaesar echoed.
Bolan considered the evening’s activities. Shit was right, and shit was all they had. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWO
Bree Smiley wasn’t smiling. She wouldn’t be quirking her eyebrow at anyone anytime soon, either. Blood leaked down her cheek as the Mexican intern sewed her left eyebrow back onto her face. Despite the blood and swelling, the DEA agent’s thoughts were clearly written on her face. She wasn’t happy. Bolan leaned in the door frame with his left hand bandaged. “You did good, Smiley.”
“We lost our prisoner and eight agents.”
“You survived.”
Smiley rolled an eye at the needle going in and out of her brow. “I got mutilated.”
“Scars are sexy.”
“Sicko.” Bree snorted and the effort made her wince. “How’s Mole?”
“He got tossed around pretty good in the crash. Busted ribs, his kidneys are bleeding. His left lung didn’t deflate, but it’s lacerated. Good news is the doctor doesn’t want to operate. They were most worried about infection from our septic stroll down below. They taped him up, put him on antibiotics and sedated him. Rest is what he needs most.”
Smiley looked around without moving her head. “Pretty swank digs for Tijuana. Your controller did good.”
Bolan smiled. Kurtzman would be amused at being referred to as Bolan’s “controller,” but Smiley was right. He had chosen wisely. Hospital Angeles had been built by the Medical Tourism Corporation specifically to cater to patients visiting from the United States and Canada. It was pretty much medical colonialism, but Bolan wasn’t complaining and he doubted LeCaesar would, either. It was a thoroughly modern facility, and the best treatment anyone who had been in a gunfight in Tijuana was likely to get.
“Where are the rest of my boys?” Smiley asked.
Bolan had made some calls. “They’re at the morgue along with what’s left of Cuah and the dead perps. Your men are being prepped for transport to the States. Cuah and company are staying here.”
“What about you?”
Bolan shrugged. “What about me?”
“Well, Cuah’s dead. What’s the status of your liaison-observer apparatus now?”
“Status is I’m going to stick around for a while. Hope you don’t mind.”
Smiley was visibly relieved. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that. You know, if you hadn’t been there Mole and I wouldn’t have made it out alive.”
“Yeah,” Bolan agreed.
“Humble, too.”
He shrugged.
The woman looked at Bolan sincerely through her bruises. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
The intern dabbed away the remaining blood with a wipe and stepped back to admire his handiwork. “There.”
“What’s the prognosis?” Bolan asked.
“Twelve stitches.” He gave Agent Smiley a sympathetic look. “There will be a scar.”
“Scars are sexy.” Bree regarded Bolan dryly. “Or so I’m told.”
“Dr. Reyes suspects there may be concussion. It might be best if we kept you for observation until morning and scheduled you for an MRI. Do you—”
“Screw that.”
“Mmm.” The intern looked back and forth between Smiley and Bolan. “Somehow I suspected you would say that. Very well, I recommend you see your personal physician when you get back to the United States as soon as you can. If you experience nausea or dizziness before you return to the United States, come back here immediately.”
“Right, thanks.”
The intern took his clipboard, made some notes and left.
“Right.” Smiley stood up, made an unhappy noise and sat back down again. “Jesus…”
“Take it slow.”
“Shit.”
