Don Pendleton - Powder Burn

“We’re already fighting,” she replied.

“Good point.”

He held a straight course on Carrera 11 until they passed a large estate with wooded grounds on the right, then made a hard right-hand turn onto Calle 88 eastbound. More trees on both sides of the road, but Bolan knew that they were running out of residential neighborhood, with Avenida Alberto Lleras Camargo four blocks ahead. He’d have to make a move before that intersection, or risk carrying their firefight into rush hour traffic.

“On our right,” he said. “Hang on.”

Bolan swerved into a parking lot that served a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings, putting the Pontiac through a tight 180 that made its tires squeal and left Bolan facing back toward the street they’d just left.

The one-man chase car wasn’t far behind, making the turn into the parking lot with room to spare. The driver had his window open, left arm angling some kind of stubby SMG toward the G6, where Bolan and his shotgun rider crouched behind their open doors with pistols leveled.

They squeezed off together, three rounds apiece, peppering the Toyota’s windshield. Behind the glass, a screaming face flushed crimson and the blue car swerved away, leaping the curb of a divider, plowing over grass and slamming hard into a row of parked vehicles.

No one emerged from the wreckage, and Bolan dismissed it, turning back toward the parking lot’s entrance. A black Mercedes-Benz appeared, nosing in a bit more cautiously than the Toyota, but determined to advance. Its passenger was firing by the time the Benz finished its turn, a compact submachine gun stuttering full-auto fire.

The natural reaction was to flinch from those incoming rounds, but the Executioner stood his ground, framing the shooter in his Glock’s sights with a steady six-o’clock hold. Ten rounds remained in the pistol, and he triggered four in as many seconds, watching the 165 grain Speer Gold Dot JHP slugs strike home with 484 foot-pounds of destructive energy.

His first shot tore into the gunman’s shoulder, while his second sent the SMG tumbling from spastic fingers. Number three drilled the guy’s howling face, and the fourth shot was lost through the Benz’s windshield. Good enough.

In the meantime, Lieutenant Pureza was nailing the driver with one-two-three shots through the windshield, another swerve starting, this one to their left. The Benz passed Bolan’s door with two feet to spare, losing momentum on the drive-by, but still traveling fast enough to buckle its grille when it struck one of the parking lot’s tall lampposts.

“Are we done?” Pureza asked him, as the echoes faded.

“Done,” Bolan said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Usaquén District, Bogotá

Jorge Serna was nervous. Not excited, as he’d always thought that he might be if he was called to meet with El Padrino. Not at all convinced that he would even manage to survive their meeting.

Survival, under certain circumstances, was a grave mistake.

He should have been impressed at passing by the lavish Country Club de Bogotá with its vast golf course, so close to the Mercado de las Pulgas flea market, but a world apart from bargain shoppers. Serna should have been dazzled by the sight of Unicentro, one of Colombia’s largest shopping malls, or the elite shops at Santa Ana Centro Comercial, but all of it was lost on him.

His last day?

That still remained to be seen.

El Padrino’s estate was surrounded by seven-foot walls topped by broken glass set in concrete. The only access, through an ornate wrought-iron gate, was guarded by armed men around the clock. Their number varied: never less than two, sometimes six or seven if the need arose.

On this day, he counted five men on the gate, armed with the same Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles carried by members of Colombia’s Urban Counter-Terrorism Special Forces Group. The guns resembled something from a science fiction film, but Serna knew they were deadly, with a cyclic rate of 750 to 900 rounds per minute on full-auto fire.

Only the best for El Padrino’s personal guards.

As the limousine approached, one of the guards rolled back the gate by hand. Small talk within the family claimed that the gate had once been operated by remote control, with a motor and pulleys, until a power failure made El Padrino a captive within his own walls. Workmen had been routed from bed after midnight, in the midst of a fierce thunderstorm, to overhaul the system and return it to manual control.

Passing through that gate, Serna wondered if he would be breathing when he left the property. Or whether he would ever leave.

Another rumor claimed that El Padrino had a private cemetery on the grounds, or that he fed the bodies of the soldiers who displeased him into the red-hot maw of a specially designed incinerator, sending them off in a dark cloud of smoke.

Serna had smiled at those stories, with everyone else.

But he wasn’t smiling at this moment.

He barely registered the vast house, wooded grounds or soldiers on patrol in pairs, some leading dogs. The limo whisked along a driveway, circling the mansion to deposit Serna and his escorts at a service entrance, at the rear. Another pair of soldiers met them there and nodded for them to go inside.

At the last moment, as they crossed the threshold, Serna felt a sudden urge to bolt, run for his life, but where could he go? Surrounded by walls and by men like himself, who would kill without a heartbeat’s hesitation, what would be the point?

To make it quick, he thought, and shuddered.

“Are you cold, Jorge?” one of his escorts asked. The others laughed.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“We’ll see.”

They ushered him into a large room—were there any small rooms in the house?—with bookshelves on the walls rising from floor to ceiling. At the center of the room stood El Padrino, paging through a massive tome atop a bookstand. It looked like maps or some kind of atlas.

“Jorge,” Naldo Macario said, “thanks for coming.”

As if I had a choice, Serna thought. But he answered, “De nada, Padrino.”

“You’ve had a bad day,” his master said. “It shows on your face. May I offer you something? Tequila? Cerveza?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“So, direct to business then.” Macario approached him, smiling underneath a thick moustache, hair glistening with oil and combed back from his chiseled face. “You failed me, yes?”

Serna could see no point in lying. “That is true, Godfather.”

“I send five men to perform a simple task, and four are dead. The job is still unfinished. Only you remain, Jorge.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.”

Apologies were clearly pointless, but what else could he say? He had failed and survived, the worst combination of all.

“I know you’re sorry,” Macario said. “I see it in your eyes. But failure must have consequences, yes?”

Serna’s voice failed him, refused to pronounce his own death sentence, but he gave a jerky little nod.

“Of course you understand,” Macario went on. “Under normal circumstances, I would have you taken to the basement, and perhaps even filmed your punishment as an example to my other soldiers.”

Serna felt his knees go weak. It was a challenge to remain upright.

“But these,” El Padrino said, “are not normal circumstances, eh? For all your failings, it appears that I still need your help.”

“My help, sir?”

“You saw the American, yes? Before he killed the others and escaped, you saw his face?”

“I did, sir.”

“And you would recognize him if you met again?”

“I would.” He nodded to emphasize the point, seeing a small, faint gleam of hope.

“Then it appears that you must live…for the moment,” Macario replied. “Correct your error, find this gringo for me, and you may yet be redeemed.”