Powder Burn

It pleased Mutis to think of her as both dead and embarrassed, though the concepts struck him as a contradiction. Rather, the CNP would be humiliated by the vision of its agent lying nude and bloody on the street.

“I want to see!” Fajardo said, almost whimpering.

“Shut up!” Mutis snapped. “Is that…? Mother Mary! She’s alive! The bitch is— And the other gringo!”

Mutis swiveled in his seat, barely aware when Fajardo snatched the glasses from his hand. In the backseat, Jorge Serna and Edgar Abello sat with automatic weapons in their laps, regarding him impassively.

“Get after them,” Mutis snapped. “They must not escape! Quickly!”

The shooters moved as if their lives depended on it, which was, in fact, the case. A simple, mundane order had been given—take three lives and snuff them out. So far, Mutis had accomplished only one-third of his mission.

El Padrino would not understand.

He would not be amused.

Within the cartel Mutis served, success was commonly rewarded and failure was invariably punished. He had witnessed El Padrino’s punishments on several occasions—had been drafted to participate in one of them, a grisly business—and did not intend to suffer such a fate.

Better to kill the bitch and gringo, or die in the attempt.

Mutis sat watching as his gunmen crossed Carrera 11, jogging in and out of bomb haze toward the epicenter of the blast. He took the glasses back from Fajardo, focused them again to suit his eyes and found the blasted killing ground of the café.

Both of his targets had regained their feet. They had been bloodied, seemed disoriented at the moment, but their wounds were superficial. Neither one of them was bleeding out, goddamn it.

Even though he was expecting it, Mutis still flinched when Serna opened fire, followed a heartbeat later by the sound of Abello’s weapon. Neither found their mark the first time, and their two targets started running.

“What are you waiting for?” he raged at Fajardo. “For the love of Christ, get after them!”

BOLAN HADN’T SEEN THE shooters yet and didn’t care to. If he could avoid them for the moment, reach his car and get the hell away from there before police arrived, he’d be satisfied.

Payback could wait.

And so he ran, pulling Arcelia Pureza behind him until she could run on her own and jerked free of his grip.

“Where’s Jack?” she asked him, as they reached an intersection, traffic stalled by the explosion, driver’s gaping.

“Dead,” Bolan replied. “Come on!”

She kept pace with him, had to have heard the automatic weapons fire behind them, but still asked, “Where are we going?”

“The garage up here,” he said. “I have a car. Save your breath!”

A bullet crackled past him, making Bolan duck and dodge. He couldn’t outrun bullets, but in the confusion of the aftershock, with all the dust and smoke, the shooters likely wouldn’t do their best.

Halfway across the street, a taxi driver took his best shot, swerved around the van in front of him and tried to jump the intersection, going nowhere fast. A stutter burst from Bolan’s rear stitched holes across the taxi’s windshield, nailed the driver to his seat and froze his dead foot on the cab’s accelerator. Bolan and Pureza cleared the lane before the taxi shot across and plowed into a storefront on the south side of the street.

“Ahead and on the left!” he told Pureza, in case she’d missed the thirty-foot bilingual sign that read Estacionamiento/Parking.

They reached the open doorway that served the garage’s stairwell, and Bolan steered Pureza inside. “Third level,” he told her. “Look for a gray Pontiac G6.”

“You’re not coming?” she asked him.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

As he spoke, Bolan drew his Glock and turned to face the intersection they’d just crossed. No other motorists had replicated the cabbie’s mistake. From where the soldier stood, the cars within his line of sight looked empty, their occupants either lying low or already out and running away from the gunfire.

Bolan caught his first glimpse of the shooters, a mismatched pair, the tall one with lanky hair down to his shoulders, the short one crew-cut to the point where he looked like a skinhead. Both carried weapons that resembled AKS-74U assault rifles. They could be knockoffs, but it wouldn’t matter if the men behind them found their mark.

Bolan squeezed off a shot at the tall guy, saw him jerk and stumble, then regain his balance for a loping run that took him out of sight behind a minivan. The short one, when he swung around that way, had already found cover of his own. Too bad.

Bolan had missed his chance to end it here, but he still hoped escape was possible. It would be inconvenient—not to mention costly—if he had to leave the rented car with all his hardware in the trunk and start again from scratch.

Still better than a bullet in the head, but damned annoying anyway.

He took the concrete stairs three at a time, sprinting to catch up with Pureza and make the most of their dwindling lead.

ARCELIA PUREZA WAS FRIGHTENED. No point in denying it, as she was running away from a slaughterhouse scene with gunmen behind her, trying to finish her off. Styles was dead, she was injured, though not very badly, and she was stuck with a stranger who might or might not have a clue as to how to keep them alive.

She had not drawn her SIG Sauer SP 2022 pistol while running after Cooper on the street, but Pureza did so now, as she mounted the stairs to the parking garage’s third level. Logic told her there were probably no gunmen waiting for her inside the garage, and yet…

Pureza reached a door marked with a two-foot number “3” in yellow paint and paused to peer through its small window of glass and wire mesh. The view was limited, but she saw no one lurking anywhere within her line of sight.

She entered the garage proper, holding her pistol down against her right thigh, index finger curled around its double-action trigger and ready to fire at the first hint of danger. Pureza had never shot another human being, but her recent brush with death convinced her that she would not hesitate.

She started scanning vehicles, looking for the Pontiac G6. He’d said that it was gray, but for the life of her, Pureza couldn’t picture the car in her mind. So many modern sedans resembled one another, regardless of make and model. Cars used to be distinctive, almost works of art, but these days they came in cookie-cutter shapes, distinguished only by their small insignia.

Where was Cooper when she needed him?

As if on cue, the metal door banged open at her back. Pureza spun around, raising her SIG in a two-handed shooter’s stance and framed the big American in her sights before she recognized him, saw his hands rise with a pistol in the right and let her own gun drop.

“Down there,” he said, and pointed to his right along the line of cars nosed into numbered parking slots facing the street they’d left behind. “About halfway.”

Bolan keyed the doors, making the taillights flash with a short beep-beep sound for people who couldn’t find their car.

Pureza didn’t stand on chivalry. She got in on the passenger’s side, still holding her SIG at the ready, while Cooper slid into the driver’s seat.

“I saw two shooters,” he informed her, as he turned the key and revved the car’s engine. “May have winged one, but I can’t say for sure. If they’re climbing the stairs, we may miss them.”

“Unless there are more on the street,” she replied.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Right, then.”

Pureza found the proper button on the armrest of her door and lowered her window, while Cooper did the same on his side. Rental cars didn’t have bulletproof glass, so the windows would be of no help in a fight. Also, raised windows would hamper defense and might spray blinding glass if they shattered.

Cooper backed out of his slot, shifted gears, and then they were rolling, following big yellow arrows spray-painted on pavement and wall signs that read Salida/Exit. Pureza knew they were starting on the third level, but it still seemed to take forever, circling around and around past cars that all looked the same.

Then she saw daylight, people flocking past the entryway to the parking garage, mostly hurrying toward the blast zone. Were they planning to help? Loot the dead? Simply gawk at crimson remains of catastrophe?