Don Pendleton - Blood Dues

Emiliano followed him across the grassy postage-stamp yard, closing rapidly on the back of the house with its covered patio. They brushed past a portable barbecue, and Toro's backup veered away, his pistol drawn now. He paused long enough to check the open door that granted access to a one-car garage connected to the house. When he was satisfied that no one lurked inside, Emiliano nodded, falling into step again at Toro's heel.

They crossed the patio, circling around to the side of the house and up three concrete steps to reach the kitchen door. Standing back against the wall, Toro reached out a hand to test the knob — and found it locked.

He decided there was no way around a violent entry. They had wasted enough time already. Any more delay could spell their deaths.

A glance and nod to Emiliano, and Toro stepped around in front of the kitchen door, his automatic leveled, mentally bracing himself in case bullets started ripping through the flimsy door. He hit the door a flying kick and sent it slamming backward on its hinges, pieces of the cheap pot-metal latching mechanism rattling on the floor inside.

They went in crouching, Toro peeling left, Emiliano right, their weapons cocked and tracking, seeking any sign of hostile life.

The empty kitchen mocked them — but a muffled scuffling from deeper in the house alerted Toro. Moving swiftly through the kitchen down a narrow corridor, he closed on what were obviously bedrooms. Two doors opened off the hallway, one of them ajar, revealing an empty room beyond.

The other door was closed, and in a heartbeat the Cuban identified it as the source of the suspicious sounds.

Toro shouldered the panel, bulled on through into a tiny bedroom. Opposite the door a slender figure was grappling with the window screen, trying to batter it aside and clear a passage.

Toro and Emiliano rushed forward and grabbed him as he threw one leg across the open window's ledge, and finally dragged him back inside the room. The slender man was struggling, kicking out at both of them, a nonstop stream of Spanish curses pouring from his lips. Together they pinned him on the rumpled bed.

Emiliano raised his pistol and whipped it down across the runner's skull. The man went limp. A crimson worm of blood squirmed out from underneath the fallen runner's hairline, crawling down across his face.

The Cuban warrior glanced at his companion and nodded in the direction of the open bedroom doorway.

"La cocina," he snapped, receiving an answering nod from Emiliano.

Each man grabbed an arm of the captive, dragging him off the bed and toward the doorway, through it, back along the dingy corridor.

He was slowly beginning to revive as they reached the small kitchen. Together the Cubans eased him down into a straight-back chair, his head slumped forward, both arms dangling limply at his sides.

Toro produced a pair of handcuffs from a jacket pocket and secured one wrist, then the other, threading the handcuff's chain through a metal rung in back. The shackles kept their prisoner slumped low in his seat, unable to stand or raise his arms.

Emiliano grabbed a handful of his hair and gave the bloodied head a violent shake, gradually bringing the captive around to consciousness. The man was blinking, swallowing hard as a flash of recognition crossed his face. Then his gaze traveled to the gun in Toro's fist.

"Toro," the captive said simply.

"Julio."

Toro recalled the weasel face of Julio Rivera from other days, when they had fought together in the cause of Cuba libre. They were allies then, but even so, there had been something out of place about Rivera, something indefinably wrong, which set El Toro's teeth on edge and made him watch the man more closely than he had the other soldados in his little clandestine army. When Raoul Ornelas had begun to agitate for mutiny within the ranks, Rivera had been an early convert.

"I want Raoul," Toro told him simply.

"Raoul?"

The man was stalling, trying to come up with something he could use to bargain for his life.

"Si, pendejo. Donde esta? Diga me, pronto."

Rivera managed to dredge up a twisted grimace of defiance, jaw thrust out, lips curling in a sneer.

"Chinga tu..."

Emiliano slapped him hard across the back of the skull with his open hand, cutting off the obscene retort, snapping Julio's teeth together sharply.

"Una vez mas... Raoul," Toro repeated patiently.

Rivera glanced warily around at Emiliano, shaking his head as if to clear the ringing in his ears.

"No se."

Toro shrugged, placing his automatic on the counter beside the sink. He began rummaging through drawers, selecting kitchen implements, examining each in turn before lining them up on the counter top.

A butcher knife.

An ice pick.

A skewer.

A meat cleaver.

Rivera's eyes were widening, and his mouth fell open as he watched Toro walk in front of him to stand before the kitchen stove. The Cuban turned on one of the front burners, a blue gas flame hissing into life inches from his hand.

He brought the butcher knife back over to the stove and propped its blade across the burner, the wide tip distorting the flame. Within moments its razor edge was glowing red, catching a fire of its own and reflecting it into the Cuban's eyes.

Toro turned, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed, the hissing burner close beside his hip.

"Now, Julio... Raoul."

Julio did not respond. Instead he whimpered, struggling with the handcuffs, straining at them until the steel bracelets had worn a bloody groove in both wrists.

"Bien, Rivera." Toro's smile was totally devoid of any human feeling.

And Julio Rivera talked.

About Raoul Ornelas... Jose 99... a great deal more.

When they were finished, forty minutes later, Toro knew he had to get in touch with Bolan. Soon.

The warrior's life — and all their lives — could well be riding on the outcome of that call.

Mack Bolan pushed his Firebird eastward, the satchel full of cash on the seat beside him as he left the Club Uhuru, rolling through the heart of Liberty City toward his next target destination. The numbers were falling now, with half a dozen stops to make and no time left to waste.

Liberty City was Miami's ghetto, tucked away just south of the Opa-locka airport, out of sight for most of white Miami, and largely out of mind. On many city maps it was a blank space, the streets ignored as most of the neighborhood's population had also been ignored until very recently.

Black rage had torn the neighborhood apart in recent months, and the scars of that explosion were still visible. The fuse was still sputtering, and every public official in Miami knew that it was only a matter of time until more violence rocked the area. Suspicion, hatred and paranoia on both sides had made the area a pressure cooker, and the lid was ready to blow if someone turned the heat up, even fractionally.

Bolan's target was a numbers countinghouse some six blocks over from the Club Uhuru. The Executioner knew that all the front men and the players would be black, but it was still a Mafia franchise, run behind the scenes by one Dukey Aiuppa.

Aiuppa's real name was Vincenzo, but he won his street name from a string of welterweight bouts he fought professionally before discovering that punching men — or women and children — outside the ring brought higher pay.

Instead of knockouts now, he had a sheet of thirty-five arrests behind him, without a single conviction. A Brooklyn transplant who had worked his way up through the local ranks, Aiuppa ruled his ghetto fiefdom like a colonial warlord, surrounded by stormtroops of all nationalities and colors, reaping sky-high profits from a people mired in poverty and filth.