Crisis Nation

“I’m renting a house in La Perla.”

The inspector made a face. La Perla was one of the worst slums in San Juan and ruthlessly ruled by gang culture. “You taunt the Lion, then you climb into his jaws.”

“Well, you know how they say you should keep your enemies close.”

“They do not say you should move in next to them,” Constante scowled.

“I don’t think I’ll be staying long.”

Mono brought them their ammo and they walked out without filling any forms. As they walked back to the parking garage, Constante began speaking quietly. “You know? It is hard to be a policeman in Puerto Rico.”

Bolan nodded. It was a little known fact that perhaps other than Mexico City or Moscow there was no more dangerous place to be a police officer.

Most Americans had no idea of how bad it was. If Americans thought of their commonwealth neighbor in the Caribbean, they thought of blue water, golden sand and partying. It was a common vacation destination for East Coasters and an alternative honeymoon spot.

For the people who lived there violence was endemic. Since the rise of the cocaine trade in the 1980s the island had become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine and increasingly a heroin funnel. The Puerto Rican gang and crime cultures had risen with them. People on the island made roughly a third of the average income of the poorest mainland states, and it was reflected in their police force. They were ill-equipped and understaffed, and corruption in the force was as endemic as the violence in the streets.

“You intend to go against the crime gangs and the revolutionaries?” the inspector asked.

“I do.”

“I am ashamed to admit it, but there are those within the force who support what is happening, not out of patriotic sentiment, but because they know if we become an independent nation the potential for profit in bribery will skyrocket. The drug dealers and the gangs know this as well and are already lining pockets,” the inspector said.

Bolan suspected nothing less.

“You will need a force of cops who cannot be corrupted or bought. Those who will not be afraid to bend rules, if not break them outright,” Constante concluded.

“It’d be helpful,” Bolan said.

Constante gestured at his car and the woman leaning against it. “Then behold your second recruit.”

The woman turned. She was short, redheaded, darkly tanned with broad shoulders and an eye-popping bust line that was barely restrained by a blue T-shirt. A corset-thin waist cut what would have been a blocky figure into an hourglass.

“May I present Detective Guistina Gustolallo. She works Vice.”

Bolan could have guessed that. He also noted the Mossberg 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun crooked in one elbow like she was about to go duck hunting. Her dark eyes looked Bolan up and down in open suspicion. “Yo, Vincente.” The detective popped her gum. “Who’s the gringo?”

“Why, he is the man who put Bebito in the hospital and called Yotuel d’Nico a puto.”

Bolan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective.”

“Detective…” The woman ignored Bolan’s hand and rose up on her toes to kiss Bolan on both cheeks Latin style. “People I like call me Gustolallo. And you, Blue Eyes, qualify.”

Constante lit another cigarette. “Where is Roldan?”

The woman shrugged. “Roldan is off duty in an hour. Ordones said to call him when you need him.”

“Tell them to meet us in La Perla.” Constante turned to Bolan. “Give her the address.”

Bolan gave it to her, and Detective Gustolallo began speaking rapid-fire Spanish into her cell phone. They piled into Constante’s car and headed down toward the water. La Perla was anything but “The Pearl” of metropolitan San Juan. Beneath the four-hundred-year-old walls and turrets of the fortifications built by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, shacks and hovels leaned against one another. Even at this late hour stick-thin children wandered around in rags and picked at piles of garbage right next to feral dogs. Other piles of garbage burned or were being burned in the hovels for fuel. La Perla was just about the worst barrio in San Juan.

Inspector Constante’s shiny black Crown Victoria was clearly an anomaly. Bolan noticed cell phones in the hands of some of the children marking them as runners for the local drug dealers. They watched the black Ford with wary eyes and punched presets as they drifted back into the shadows. A trio of transvestite prostitutes made catcalls and a few improbable offers at the car and then grabbed their phones once it passed. La Perla’s grapevine was lighting up.

“We’re about to get hit,” Bolan opined.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” the inspector agreed. “I gather you made no attempt at subtlety when you moved in to the neighborhood.

“None whatsoever,” Bolan admitted.

Gustolallo popped her gum in the back seat and the safety on her shotgun clicked off.

Bolan saw a pair of headlights suddenly light up an alley ahead. “Here it comes.”

Gustolallo sang out from the back seat. “We got one behind!”

Bolan flicked the safety off his Thompson. “They’re gonna go for the pin.”

The pin was another gift from the drug gangs of Mexico, mostly used for assassinating police officers. Drive-bys were uncertain at best, but a couple of SUVs could surround and stop a car on a narrow street or in a parking lot, and then the men with automatic rifles would spill out of all doors and fill the pinned vehicle full of lead. A gleaming silver Lincoln Navigator shot into the street ahead of them with tires squealing. A tangerine-and-black Honda Element fishtailed into position behind them. On La Perla’s narrow, twisting lanes there was no room to maneuver. Constante pushed buttons on his console and the Crown Vic’s windows rolled down and the custom sunroof rolled back. Constante spit out his cigarette and grinned defiantly at the silver SUV blocking their escape. “I’m gonna ram him.”

“No,” Bolan commanded.

“No?”

“Hit Reverse. Hit the guy behind us. He’s lighter and only has four cylinders.”

“Ah!” The tires screamed on the cobblestones as the inspector stood on the breaks and threw the vehicle into Reverse. “Hold on!”

The Ford shot backward into the Element. The glare of the headlights filling the Crown Vic’s interior smashed out as the Honda crumpled like the cardboard box it was shaped like. The Crown Vic’s V-8 engine roared as it drove the stricken little SUV back. Bolan rose up through the sunroof. Glass erupted in geysers from the Honda’s windshield as Bolan painted a 15-round pattern over the driver’s position and a second one over the glass covering the man riding shotgun. Gustolallo’s shotgun hammered rapidly five times on semiauto, and the windshield failed utterly and sagged backward into the SUV’s interior.

Nothing inside the Element was moving.

Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine. “Forward! Go! Go! Go!” He dropped back down and put on his seat belt as Constante slammed the vehicle into Drive and put the pedal to the metal. The huge SUV before them had pulled out at an angle to block the lane. Now the driver was desperately trying to execute a three-point turn to face the oncoming Ford while the passengers waved their arms and screamed.

The Crown Vic hit the Navigator broadside at fifty miles per hour. The impact was brutal, but Bolan had braced himself and the air bag deployed against him. He got out of his seat belt, and clicked open his switchblade and slashed away the deflating air bag. The windshield had gone opaque with cracks, and Bolan’s door refused to budge. He rose up through the sunroof. The Navigator was wrapped around the front bumper of the vehicle. The driver and back passenger doors were folded in and not moving. Bolan bent back as one of the men in the back seat of the Navigator tried to fire at him with an M-16. The window erupted outward, but the space was too cramped inside the SUV for the gunman to fire effectively.

Bolan had no such restraints.

The Thompson ripped into life. Constante leaped out from behind the wheel as his weapon joined the crescendo. The doors facing away flew open and men piled out of the Navigator. Bolan jumped onto the hood, then leaped to the roof of the SUV. Two men turned and raised their rifles, but Bolan burned them down with a burst through their chests before they could fire. A young man with a clearly broken arm fell to his knees and raised his working hand piteously. “Madre de Dios! Por favor! Por favor!”

Bolan kept the smoking muzzle of his weapon pointed between the young man’s eyes. Gustolallo came around the SUV and kicked the surrendering punk onto his stomach. He screamed in pain as she twisted both arms back and cuffed him. Constante looked into one of the Navigator’s shattered windows and made a face at the carnage within. “Clear.”

Bolan stood atop the SUV and surveyed the area. Dogs were barking. Women and children in the hovels and tenements were screaming. Sirens began wailing in the distance. The transvestites clapped their hands and whistled. It had been a fine show, and they clearly liked the big gringo with the big gun standing on top of the Navigator’s shattered shell.

Gustolallo yanked the young man up to his knees and the inspector smiled delightedly. Bolan eyed the cringing punk. “You know him?”

“Indeed!” Constante leaned in and leered in the young man’s face. “This is Nacho d’Nico!”

Bolan smiled coldly. “Yotuel’s little brother?”