Don Pendleton: Blood Dues

The gunner rose, firing back inside the car again, then turned to make a break for freedom.

In a flash the Executioner knew exactly what was happening, and who the stranger was. He knew that he was too damned late to put the pieces back in place again, and blind mind-warping fury took over in a heartbeat.

He tromped on the convertible's gas pedal, driven back into his seat by the sudden surge of power, holding the wheel steady and aiming directly for the armed pedestrian who somehow, incredibly, did not seem to hear or see him.

A last-second correction, and he hit the guy dead center, rolling him up across the hood so that his skull impacted on the windshield, cracking the safety glass and staining it with his blood. Ornelas lay draped across the hood like some horrendous hunting trophy when the sportster came to rest another sixty feet along the path.

Bolan exited from the car and jogged back to the Caddy, bending down to glance in through the open doorway at the slaughterhouse inside. He did not have to check for pulses or move the bodies to know he was looking at a carload of corpses.

The Executioner had seen it all before, right, too damn many times.

Bolan straightened up, turning away from that vehicle of death, staring back along the little sports car's track. The flame-red shark was waiting for him there, Raoul Ornelas draped across its nose and going nowhere.

The Executioner felt hollow, drained. The battle for Miami had been too expensive for his taste — and still, he had not reached the end of it.

The was still a tab remaining to be paid for all the carnage, still a debt remaining to be cleared. He knew, with grim certainty, exactly where to send the check.

With long determined strides, he started back in the direction of the sports car.

Jorge Ybarra sipped at his champagne and made a mental note to recommend that buyers for the embassy try out a different brand in the future.

He resisted the urge to make a sour face at the insufferable swill, smiling instead at the uncomprehending wife of a minor-league African ambassador. One never knew exactly what emerging nations might regard as an insulting gesture; better to put on a brave face, and be sociable despite the hour and the endless, soporific conversation.

Ybarra was becoming sick of embassy engagements, almost longing for the simpler days when everything was cut and dried, life being lived on the edge of disaster, fighting for something one believed in. The sitting around, the verbal sparring matches, were something that the cultural attache would never become accustomed to, he knew.

He had not been disheartened by the failure of his plans for Key Biscayne. The marielistas were expendable, of course, and no one in Havana — or in Moscow, for that matter — would be likely to protest his cash expenditures considering the propaganda they could make from open warfare in the streets.

It had not been a total waste, although the knowledge of his failure had been personally unsettling. One did not advance upward through the ranks by watching long-term plans disintegrate.

He wondered just exactly how the Mafia had tumbled to his plan, and why the ranking local capo had decided to interfere. It made no sense, but then again, the gangster's presence at the killing scene had guaranteed some headlines for the bungled coup.

Not as many as it would have rated with successful executions, naturally, but still, it was better than nothing.

The waiter, Andres, appeared to rescue him from the midst of an interminable joke the Africans were trying to complete with no success. There was a phone call for him, and the caller would give no name other than Jose, insisting that he must speak with the cultural attache at once.

Ybarra graciously excused himself, feigning minor irritation as he made his apologies to the African delegation. In truth, he was looking forward to some words with Raoul Ornelas, a chance to be rid of the dreadful champagne once and for all.

He told Andres curtly that he would take the call in his office, already moving for the stairs, brushing through the tuxedoed crowd at a fast walking pace.

He mounted the stairs, rehearsing in his mind exactly what he planned to tell Ornelas. The man deserved a reprimand, but yet, if he escaped arrest on this fiasco, he might still be useful in the future.

Ybarra reached his office door, unlocked it with the special key that he alone possessed. No other cultural attache in the world was quite so jealous of his secrets as the slim man from Havana.

He closed the door behind him, lost in the gloom for a moment until he found the light switch, flicked it on. After the darkness of the tomb, it took his eyes an instant to adjust — but he immediately saw that there was something wrong.

His eyes narrowed against the sudden glare, and he discerned something on his desk, a bulky object... not unlike a football. He took a closer step, frowning... and he recognized the severed head of one Raoul Ornelas, wide eyes gaping at him sightlessly, the mouth twisted into one last grimace, hair matted down with drying blood.

Ybarra felt the scream rising in his throat, but vomit choked it off. He was gagging, backing away from the desk on unsteady legs, when a subtle scraping sound behind him alerted him to danger.

He spun around, mouth dropping open at the sight of a tall man, dressed in skintight black, emerging from behind the open office door. The intruder's face was blackened with cosmetics, eyes as cold as death itself — and the automatic pistol in his rising fist was silencer-equipped.

Jorge Ybarra never heard the shot that killed him.