Don Pendleton - Killpath

Morales stomped hard on Rojas’s shoulder, and she wanted to cry out in pain. She tried to push up off of the floor when something crashed heavily on to her arm and shoulder. Again her face struck the tiles, blurring her vision and jarring her jaw.

Morales’s bulging forearm pushed across her face, and Rojas kept her chin pinned to her clavicle. If that hunk of muscle and power got across her windpipe, everything would be over. Jagged nails stabbed at her forehead, raking back in an effort to wrench her head up.

“Don’t struggle so much, Hilda,” Morales sneered. “It won’t hurt for—”

Rojas lunged up with her good arm, blindly digging her fingers into Morales’s meaty face. She jabbed her eye with a thumbnail, and Morales let out a howl. “Enough!”

Heavy boots stomped across the wet tiles. Rojas felt rough hands grip her own trying to make her release Morales’s face. Rojas grit her teeth, resisting the guard’s efforts. Morales had come after her, taunted her, given her the desire to kill.

She wanted to ensure Morales would never forget her failure to end the life of Brunhilde Rojas. The memory would be scrawled across her face in the unmistakable signature of Rojas’s claw marks.

A punch connected with Rojas’s jaw, and the world went black.

It had been a good run, but her sons would go unavenged, she thought as she descended into oblivion.

* * *

WHEN ROJAS OPENED her eyes, she was dressed. She was in a pair of coveralls, though one of her arms was hanging in a sling under the open front of the prison jumpsuit. She was in an office with a window that showed the open sky outside. She spotted the guard tower nearby. So, she was still on prison property. The desk was clean—no papers, but more importantly, no pens or letter openers that she could grab and turn into a weapon.

A burly man sat in the chair behind the desk, and a tall, dark stranger stood, arms folded, against the wall. Rojas blinked, lingering on the man’s cool blue eyes. He was observing her, his features impassive. His presence in the room was a weight, a magnet for her.

“Brunhilde Rojas, aka La Brujah,” the seated man read from a file. “Born in Argentina, daughter of a Colombian father and a German mother, hence the name Brunhilde. Naturalized citizen of the United States at age four.”

Rojas glanced at the man behind the desk. He was a broad, serious fellow who showed a road map of years on his face. “So you know who I am…”

“You followed in the footsteps of the Cocaine Godmother and the Queen of the Pacific, right down to having your teenaged sons follow you into the business,” the man continued.

“And who are you?” Rojas asked, anger spiking in her voice. Her teenaged sons. Mis hijos .

“My name is Harold Brognola, Justice Department,” he offered. “And my associate, here, is Matt Cooper.”

Rojas’s lip twitched. “You mention my sons again…”

“Not even your last remaining son?” Brognola asked.

“Pepito?” Suddenly the iron that was holding her straight in her chair buckled under the weight of her youngest boy’s mention. “What have you done with him?”

“We haven’t done anything with him other than put him into protective custody,” Cooper told her. “But we have found out that your cartel is looking for Pepito.”

Rojas grit her teeth. “So you come to prison to mock me with this? I’ve been in a cell for seven years! I don’t know anything new.”

“Apparently you know enough,” Cooper told her. “They sent someone to kill you.”

“That didn’t work too well for them,” Rojas answered.

“You’re not an angel,” Cooper said. “Not with the dozens of kills you allegedly had a hand in. But you are a mother, and Pedro Rojas is innocent.”

She leveled her gaze on the blue-eyed, deep-voiced man. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and she could see the powerful swell of muscles, as well as the crisscross of old scars which wove its own tale of a long and brutal life. “So I talk, and then what? You make some arrests, a few men get taken off the streets in New York or in Austin or—”

“Cali.” Cooper cut her off.

“You want me to give you information about Cali?” Rojas asked. “It’s been a few years since I’ve been there. Says so right in that file.”

“I want more than information,” Cooper said. “And I don’t want information for arrests. Los Soldados de Cali Nuevos could care less if a few of their guys go to jail. Arrests won’t give them a reason to spare Pepito. We need to make them know that even looking at an American citizen again will bring down all the fires of heaven and hell.”

Rojas sat back. “No arrests?”

“You still know how to use a gun,” Cooper told her. “And while that shoulder is healing up, I’ll refresh your skills.”

“How bad is my arm?” Rojas asked, looking down at the poor limb in its sling. Her ribs hurt, too, but at least she could breathe, meaning that they hadn’t been broken. “X-rays are still being developed, but it’s probably just a dislocated shoulder,” Brognola said.

Rojas glanced sideways at Cooper. “And you’re going to give me a pistol?”

“Pistols. Rifles. Shotguns. Sub guns. Whatever we need,” Cooper answered. “And we’re not going to give them to you in here.”

Rojas flexed her hand, then gingerly tried to move her arm under the jumpsuit. No, nothing was broken, and Cooper was right; it wouldn’t take long for her to get back into fighting condition.

“Why would you help me in protecting my son from the New Soldiers?” Rojas asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“What’s in it for us is the same as what’s in this for you. Payback,” Cooper said. “They killed your sons. They also tortured and killed a DEA agent.”

Rojas frowned.

“I’m not asking you to give a damn about Agent Blanca,” Cooper continued. “But I do want you to get me close enough to teach the survivors a lesson.”

“Survivors,” Rojas repeated. She locked eyes with Brognola. “I thought you said you were Justice Department.”

“I said I was,” Brognola answered. “He didn’t.”

Rojas pushed herself up from her chair. “And what if I don’t want to go?”

Cooper tapped the file in front of Brognola. “The federal government couldn’t convict you on the sixty to seventy murders of rivals and fellow gang members you either did yourself or farmed out to hit men. You outsmarted them on that front, so they nailed you on possession and sale of narcotics. But you’ve got bodies piled up behind you. A lot of bodies.”

“You’re not appealing to my angels?” Rojas asked.

Cooper narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to her. Their faces were inches apart, and this close, his gaze bored into her. “I’m asking for you to let your devils out to play. So, does the Witch, La Brujah, ride again?”

“If we succeed, what else happens?” Rojas asked.

“Pepito will be safe. And we can fake your death. No one will ever see you again, unless it’s on a telenovella ,” Cooper promised.

“I’ll be with Pepito?”

Cooper nodded. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you and he are together.”

Rojas didn’t flinch from his steely gaze. Some voice at the back of her mind brought up the possibility that her Pepito was already dead, and once this was done, this man would put a bullet in the back of her skull.

But these men didn’t seem duplicitous. She sensed honesty and strength in Cooper, that made her want to jump at this chance. He didn’t seem like a fanatic so much as a crusader, a too-good-to-be-true idealist out to make the world a better place, despite the lethal intentions of going to Cali, armed to the teeth.