Colony Of Evil

“Not Americans, in general,” he said. “I set a goal and do my best to reach it, after planning for the worst contingencies that I can think of.”

“Is it sometimes wiser not to try?” she asked.

“If you believe that,” Bolan challenged, “why aren’t you at home in Tel Aviv?”

“I go where I am sent,” she said. “And I was not sent here to storm Colonia Victoria.”

“You think I was?”

She shrugged, aware of Bolan watching her. Not only following the movements of her hands.

“I’m not a mind reader, of course,” she said. “But you impress me as a soldier, not a spy. I don’t think you were sent to simply build a dossier on Dietrich and his cronies.”

“No,” he said. “Were you?”

“I am supposed to gather evidence that can be used to blow his cover, as you say. Perhaps to shame the government that shelters him. Myself, I’m not convinced it will be an effective strategy. Colombians appear to have great tolerance for such embarrassment, and very little shame.”

“You went beyond your brief tonight,” Bolan observed.

“In a good cause, I hope.”

“So, when we’re finished here,” he said, “Jorge and I will get out of your hair.”

“You plan to walk?”

“Well, maybe you could drop us at a rental agency,” Bolan said, smiling ruefully.

“Maybe,” she told him, “I can do better than that.”

“SLOW DOWN,” the man in black advised his driver. “They’re already nervous, and you know they’re trigger-happy at the best of times.”

The driver slowed their black Mercedes to a crawl, passing between the rows of factories that smoked and fumed around the clock. Downrange, six cars with flashing lights on top surrounded three more vehicles, their headlights highlighting the damage suffered by those other cars. Armed men in quasi-military uniforms scurried around the scene, peering at bodies scattered on the ground.

“I see him,” said the driver as they neared the scene of orchestrated chaos.

“Yes,” the man in black replied. “I wondered if he’d come out at this hour, himself.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been home yet,” the driver said with a smirk. “You’ve seen his mistress, eh?”

“The new one? I’m surprised her parents don’t impose a curfew.”

“Would they dare?” the driver asked.

“You have a point. Stop here. Stay with the car. If anything goes wrong, get out at any cost and warn him.”

“Herr Hauptmann—”

“I order it!”

“Yes, sir!”

Of course, something already had gone wrong. If Krieger had completed his assignment as commanded, Otto Jaeger would be sleeping at the moment, maybe dreaming of his wives at home. Instead, he had to deal with corpses in the middle of the night and listen to Joaquin Menendez complain.

With one hand on the Walther P-5 compact pistol in his coat pocket, Jaeger approached the scowling DAS chief. There was no reason to think that he would need the gun tonight, but given the dramatic mood swings Menendez was famous for, it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

Perhaps he’s crazy, Jaeger thought.

And said, “Good morning, Herr Director. It’s unfortunate that your subordinates disturbed you for a matter of this sort.”

“Unfortunate, you say? With eight men dead.”

Krieger’s whole team? It seemed impossible, but would explain why no one had called Jaeger to report their failure. There was no one left.

Jaeger was cautious in replying to Menendez. He might easily have said that eight dead meant a sluggish night for Bogotá, but he preferred not to antagonize Menendez. It was dangerous and unproductive.

“Only eight?” he asked instead.

“You were expecting more?”

“I had expected none at all,” Jaeger replied with perfect honesty. Krieger was good enough—had been—to simply make his targets disappear, unless there were examples to be made.

This night, it seemed, Krieger and Rauschman, with their native help, were the examples.

“May I view the bodies?” Jaeger asked Menendez.

The Colombian considered it, then dipped his chin in the affirmative. “Touch nothing.”

“That’s a promise.”

Jaeger left the DAS director, turning toward the shot-up vehicles. He needed to replace the Volkswagen and the Mercedes. Both of them were badly damaged, and it left him short of rolling stock in Bogotá. He had another Benz on hand, besides the one that had delivered him to this grim scene, and half a dozen motorcycles. Not enough for fifty men by any means.

Now forty-eight, he thought as he approached the nearest corpse.

The third car, facing toward the others, was a cheap Fiat, run-down even before it ran into a hail of bullets and expired. The relative positions of the cars told Jaeger that the Fiat’s driver had been taken by surprise, or else pursued here, where he turned to fight. The latter seemed more likely, but Jaeger supposed he’d never really know.

Jaeger found Rauschman sprawled between the Benz and the VW, lying on his back. A slug had entered through his left eye, taking out the right-rear portion of his skull. He looked surprised and vaguely guilty.

So you should, Jaeger thought. You have disappointed everyone.

Was there a Hell for failures? Jaeger didn’t know, and at the moment didn’t really care.

He checked the other corpses, walking all around the scene, crunching the spent brass underfoot. There were no bodies by the Fiat, no apparent blood, suggesting that his men had missed their targets, or at least had failed to wound them mortally.

“Where is the eighth?” he asked a DAS captain who’d followed him around the cars, watching his every move. “Herr Menendez said eight were killed, but there are only seven here.”

The captain grunted at him, turned and pointed to a nearby field littered with pieces of equipment someone had discarded but had never hauled away. Now Jaeger saw a solitary officer standing beside what seemed to be a mound of earth or pile of dirty rags dumped on the ground.

He left the captain, walked over to Krieger’s dusty corpse and crouched beside it.