Don Pendleton: Shadow War

Manning stepped forward. “Okay, Rafe,” he said. “You lost rock-paper-scissors, so you’re the drunk.”

“It’s bullshit, you know,” Encizo answered, crossing to the bar. “If anyone should be the drunk, it should be T.J.”

“This is subterfuge,” James said. “Not real life.”

“I’m right here,” Hawkins complained. “I’m standing right here.”

“You want to be the drunk?” James asked, his voice dry.

“No. I’m good, thanks,” Hawkins said.

“Not the vodka,” Manning said as Encizo picked up a bottle of clear liquor from the suite bar. “It doesn’t stink enough. Use the Beefeater gin.”

The Phoenix Force pro upended half a bottle over himself. Instantly the room stank of pine needles over the abrasive smell of grain alcohol. Hawkins and Manning quickly backed up to keep from being splashed. Encizo kept a grip on the bottle and grinned at them.

“Don’t be shy, boys. I’m not heavy, I’m your brother.”

Manning and Hawkins quickly took their auto-injectors from James and tucked them into the small of their backs. Encizo put his arms around the shoulders of the two men, prepping for his role as incoherent drunk.

“This is all very Nancy Drew,” Hawkins muttered.

“Nancy Drew used to pretend to get drunk?” Manning demanded, incredulous.

“She wore disguises and stuff,” Hawkins said. “Besides, Rafe’s really more of a Bess.”

“Bess?” James asked from behind them. The team began to move toward the door to their room. “Who the hell is Bess?”

“She was Nancy’s fat friend.”

“Hey!” the stocky Encizo protested.

“They always said she was pretty, though,” Hawkins said quickly.

“I am pretty,” Encizo agreed as Manning pulled the door to the room open.

“Why do you know so much about Nancy Drew? Is there something you aren’t telling us?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Hawkins fired the standard U.S. military quip right back.

James fingered his com link. “We’re rolling,” he said.

“Copy,” McCarter answered from the vehicle.

“Copy,” Price echoed from Stony Man.

Phoenix Force moved down the hall toward the elevator.

Gonzales felt his heart sink. He watched Marta, Lagos’s woman, stroll into the warehouse through the door and walk into the light of the halogen lamps. At twenty, the former call girl and Mexico City porn star was a sight to behold. Her nails were painted in blood-red and her left hand held a lollipop she worked like a pro.

Her big, brown eyes widened in mock surprise as she regarded the hanging men. Her pink tongue lathed the head of the lollipop.

She giggled.

Lagos moved up behind her and whispered something into her ear. She reached up and traced her hand down the angular line of his face. If the violent drug kingpin had a weakness, it was this young female prostitute.

Despite himself, Gonzales’s eyes were drawn to the smooth line of her flat stomach where a tiny gold hoop had been inserted in her navel. She wore no bra, and her nipples poked hard against the sheer fabric of her blouse. The skin on her body was flawless.

Gonzales felt his stomach turn queasy.

Her perfume, something heavy and expensive, rolled into his nose, momentarily overpowering the stink of body fluids and terror that surrounded him. His mind recoiled from his terror, his thoughts rebounding like a rubber ball in an empty room. He thought about his little girl and his wife. He flashed on images of the bodies of people he’d seen who’d suffered at the hands of the Zetas.

He felt tears welling up in his eyes and he used the last vestiges of his pride to blink them back as Marta, at once sadistic and seductive, glided forward. She leaned in close, her beauty a blunt instrument, her breath hot and sweet against his neck, the crush of her heavy breast hard against his stomach. When she spoke, she purred, but her voice was the singsong soprano of a little girl.

“You were naughty,” she chided. “So naughty, and now you must be punished. I remember you from that restaurant in Cancún. Do you remember, Gabriel?”

Gonzales nodded. He’d worn a wire designed to passively boost the conversation for the CIA surveillance team’s parabolic boom mike. Lagos had met with a Venezuelan moneyman named Sincanaros and a representative of FARC, the Colombian Communist insurgent army and largest narco-military in the world. Marta had been there, dressed in a stunning little black dress that cost about as much as a U.S. union plumber made in a year. She’d cooed and rubbed her thighs together throughout the meeting, flustering even the experienced Colombian guerrilla commander.

“I remember,” Gonzales said, his voice hoarse.

“Lagos wanted me to act naughty that night,” she said. Her expression was coy, childlike. “Do you remember me being naughty? How I touched myself while everyone watched?”

Gonzales closed his eyes. He felt his gorge rising and from his churning, fear-cramped stomach, acid bubbled up and burned the lining of his esophagus. He winced in pain.

Marta’s tiny little hand found Gonzales’s crotch. He flinched. “I think you were excited that night,” she said. “I was so naughty.” She let go and stepped back. “Tonight is going to be a little different.”

From the small of her back the young woman produced a pearl-handled switchblade. She held it out and Gonzales closed his eyes again. He heard the greasy click as the tightly wound spring released the knife. He opened his eyes and saw the 5-inch blade wildly reflecting the light of the halogen lamps.

“Let’s see what’s going on with Gabriel.” Marta giggled.

She dug the point of her blade into the denim fabric of his jeans at his fly. He winced as she poked the soft skin of his inner thigh, and he felt blood trickle down his leg. Marta worked, grunting softly with the effort, to cut away the fabric around his crotch.

In seconds his penis hung exposed. The crushing weight of his helpless vulnerability slammed into him all over again. Only the thought of his wife and daughter kept his tongue still.

Marta stepped back and slid the still-open switchblade behind the buckle of her wide, black belt. The pearl handle rested against the smooth, brown stretch of her flat abdomen.

She turned her head and barked a command. A short, squat gunman stepped forward.

Gonzales’s eyes bulged from his head, and he moaned out loud despite his efforts to stifle the sound. Marta giggled again.

“No, don’t start it,” she snapped. “I want to start it.”

“Sí,” the man said. He stepped back, handing the orange-and-black power grass trimmer to the slight young woman. The muscles of her arms stood out in vivid relief as she mastered the weight. The long orange extension cord trailed out behind her, disappearing into the dark beyond the halogen lights.

The grass trimmer sprang to life in her hands, the 18-volt power tool screaming as the hard plastic cord spun at 7000 revolutions per minute. Gonzales realized the device would tear his clothes from his body, then flay his flesh open in a techno-modern version of the ancient Chinese “death of a thousand cuts.” His throat closed in his fear.

Marta grinned. “This is my favorite weapon. Its trademarked system uses centrifugal force to advance the line automatically as I need it.”

The twisted Lolita rattled off the grass trimmer’s specs in English with obvious enthusiasm, the way the proud owner of an American muscle car or an Italian Ferrari might talk about their automobile engine. Goddamn you, Yankees, he cursed his involvement with the CIA who had left him to die after his service.

Gunning the motor, Marta stepped forward. Her expression was twisted now, her grin so wide it threatened to split her face in two. Behind her, Lagos and his men had shuffled forward, their laughter almost muted by the high-pitched whine of the grass trimmer’s 7.1-liter engine.