Powder Burn

“Narcotics Division,” the woman added, as she touched Bolan’s hand, there and gone.

“Okay, so everyone’s on board with this?” Bolan asked.

“I think that it would help,” Styles said, “if we could clarify exactly what ‘this’ is.”

Before Bolan could answer that, a waitress appeared at his elbow. He paused, tossed a mental dart at the menu before him and ordered tamales to be on the safe side, with Club Colombia beer for a chaser.

When the waitress wandered out of earshot, Bolan asked, “Which part are you unclear about?”

Styles glanced at his native counterpart, frowning, then turned back to Bolan and said, “The whole thing, I suppose. Look, we took a bad hit at the Palace of Justice, no question about it. I lost my chief of station, not to mention Counselor Webb. The Colombians, Jesus…the whole second tier of their federal law enforcement network was gone in one swoop.”

“And the shooters were political?”

“Supposedly,” Styles said.

“All six were members of the AUC,” Lieutenant Pureza advised him. “That is the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. We have confirmed their records and affiliations.”

“And the AUC’s a right-wing group,” Bolan said.

“As in ultranationalist, pushing neo-Nazi,” Styles replied.

“And you suspect they’re working for Naldo Macario’s cartel?”

“It’s more than mere suspicion,” Pureza said. “We have documented cartel contact and collaboration with the AUC. Macario supports the group with cash and cocaine, which members of the AUC then sell abroad or trade for weapons.”

“And in exchange for that?” Bolan asked.

Frowning, the young lieutenant answered, “Members of the AUC protect his coca crops and his refining plants, harass his competition and dispose of troublesome officials.”

“So, you know all this, and no one’s crushed the operation…why, again?”

“There are complexities,” she said, and glanced away, avoiding Bolan’s gaze.

“Well, there you go,” Bolan said. “I’m the ax that cuts red tape.”

“And what’s involved in that, exactly?” Styles inquired.

The waitress brought his beer. Bolan sipped it, savored it, then set the frosty mug back on the tabletop.

“The law’s not working for you,” he replied. “It really hasn’t worked for decades, right?” Pureza was about to protest, but he raised a hand to silence her. “I understand, it’s relative. Reform follows a cycle, like the weather. People make adjustments and decide how much corruption they can tolerate. But this Macario has thrown the playbook out the window. He’s like Escobar on crank, no better than a rabid animal. While your two agencies are following the rules, playing connect the dots and trying to indict him, he keeps running people through the meat grinder, making Colombia look like a cut-rate slaughterhouse.”

“We’ve done our best,” Pureza said.

“It isn’t good enough,” Bolan replied. “If he was only murdering Colombians, the folks in Washington could hem and haw, debate some kind of sanctions, stall it out and hope he dies from cancer or gets flattened by a bus. But now he’s killing U.S. diplomats and federal agents, reaching out to pull the same crap in the States that he’s been doing here. That’s absolutely unacceptable.”

“We’re with you,” Styles replied. “I’m simply asking what you plan to—”

Bolan never heard the rest of it. A shock wave struck them, billowing across the street as thunder roared and sheets of window glass came crashing down on every side. The air was full of shrapnel, flying furniture and bodies, as he struck the pavement, rolling, covering his head instinctively with upraised arms.

The aftermath of any great explosion was a ringing silence, like the void of outer space. It took a heartbeat, sometimes two or three, before sound filtered back to traumatized eardrums. During the same brief gap, nostrils picked out the intermingled smells of smoke, dust, blood and burning flesh.

Bolan knew he was hit. Something had stung his left biceps and scored his thigh on the same side, but neither wound was serious. He’d leak, but he would live.

Unless there was a follow-up.

Squirming around on pavement strewed with bits of scrap and shattered concrete, Bolan looked for his companions. Styles was laid out on his back, unmoving, with the bright head of a nail protruding from his forehead, just above a glazed left eye. There was no need to check his pulse to verify that he was gone.

Arcelia Pureza was alive and coughing, fingers probing at a raw slice at her jawline. Bolan went to her on hands and knees, clutching her arm.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to move.”

“What? Move? Why move?”

The gunfire started then.

“That’s why,” he said, and yanked the woman to her feet.

2

The ANFO blast shattered windows for a block in each direction, paving Carrera 11 with a crystal layer of glass. Smoke roiled along the street and sidewalks, human figures lurching in and out of it like the undead in a horror film. Most of them looked like zombies, too, with vacant eyes in bloody faces, caked with dust and grime as if they’d just climbed out of graves.

“Goddamn it!” Germán Mutis snarled. “I can’t see anything!”

“It’s finally clearing,” Jaime Fajardo said.

And he was right. After a lapse of seconds that seemed painfully protracted, Mutis saw the dust was settling, the smoke rising and drifting eastward on a breeze. He snatched the glasses back from Fajardo’s hand and trained them on the spot where he’d last seen his three intended targets.

The chic sidewalk café was definitely out of business. Shrapnel had flayed the bright facade, turned plate glass windows into a million shattered pieces, and a compact car had vaulted from the curb, propelled by the concussive blast, to land inverted on the café’s threshold. Bodies sprawled across the dining patio, twisted in boneless attitudes of death.

“No one could live through that,” Fajardo advised.

But some of them were living. Mutis saw them rising from the dust and rubble, teetering on legs that had forgotten how to hold them upright, gaping with their dusty scarecrow faces at the carnage all around them.

Never mind the drones. Where were the three he’d meant to kill?

If they were down, his mission was successful.

If they lived….

He focused on a body that had worn a charcoal business suit before the blast. What still remained of it may well have been the DEA man’s garb. One leg was bare now, flayed of cloth and quantities of flesh, but Mutis scanned along the torso, found the bloodied face with something odd protruding from the forehead.

So, the nails had worked.

One down. And if the gringo policeman had died at his table, the other two had to be nearby.

He sought the woman first. Her clothing, while conservative, had been more colorful than anything worn by her male companions. Was the color known as mauve? He wasn’t sure, but knew that he would recognize it when he saw it.

If it wasn’t blown completely off her body.