Salvador Strike

“Fair enough,” Brognola replied. “We’ll get things happening at this end, and I’ll inform the Man you’re on the path to taking care of business.”

“Roger. Out here.”

Bolan disconnected the call and then set about the task of checking his equipment. Smalley had released the weapons and ordnance back to him without a fight, since his warrant only blanketed him for a search and a number of interagency memorandums of understanding precluded him from seizing anything he found.

Bolan stripped out of his dress clothes into a different kind of suit, one he knew to be most appropriate for the activities he planned over the next twenty-four hours. The skintight blacksuit and combat boots transformed the Executioner into an imposing figure. A military web belt encircled his waist, held in place by a pair of load-bearing suspenders. Various implements of war dangled from the harness, including the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle in a hip holster, a garrote, Ka-Bar fighting knife and several M-67 fragmentation grenades. The Beretta 93-R nestled in a shoulder rig, and ammo pouches along the belt with magazines of 9 mm ammo completed the ensemble.

Bolan packed the rest of his belongings into the waterproof equipment bag, which he stowed in the trunk of the Mustang. He climbed behind the wheel—a tight squeeze given all the gear he wore—and then headed for a tavern that the intelligence computers of the NVGTF had advised had a back room where MS-13 conducted illegal gambling operations and sold narcotics.

The Executioner was headed into the den of troublemakers, and he planned to collect a debt.

In full.

4

Bolan seemed like a ghostly specter as he passed through the doorway of the tavern and walked calmly across the grimy floor headed directly for a back door marked Fire Exit ONLY!

Most of the patrons were seated at the door with their backs to him and so, under the din of happy hour, didn’t even notice the wraithlike form that moved past them with instruments of war dangling from every part of its imposing form. The bartender noticed, however, and reached beneath the bar to sound an alarm with one hand while using the other to scoop up a shotgun. Bolan saw the move in his peripheral vision.

In fact, he’d half expected it.

The Executioner whirled to face the threat as he reached for the Desert Eagle at his hip. He leveled the pistol at the bartender’s chest just as the guy brought his shotgun to bear. Bolan waited until he saw the bartender quickly jack the wooden pump on the gun, heard the clack as the motion fed a 12-gauge shell into the breech, before he steadied the muzzle on his target and squeezed the trigger. The slug left the pistol at a muzzle velocity of over 1,300 feet per second. The round punched through the bartender’s sternum, cracked the breast-bone, tore out his lower airway and blew out a part of his spine. The impact sent him crashing into the neat row of bottles behind him as he triggered a harmless round into the ceiling.

Pandemonium erupted inside the bar, with half the patrons dropping to the floor and the other half drawing knives or guns and searching for cover. Bolan didn’t wait to become a target for an overanxious shooter, instead putting his foot to the alleged fire exit door, a scenario he knew to be unlikely, since there was no safety bar or alarm visible. His intuition paid off as the door gave way to his imposing frame.

While the reaction of the gangbanger security force proved admirable, it wasn’t a match for the Executioner—he had surprise on his side.

Bolan took the closest target, a hood in a gray sweatshirt toting a machine pistol, and blew his skull apart with a double tap at the same moment he reached for a grenade on his LBE harness. Bolan found cover behind a large support pole as two other MS-13 soldiers opened on his position with Ingram MAC-10s. Their possession of such arcane weaponry surprised him but he filed it away for later consideration and primed his grenade. He let the spoon fly and counted three seconds of cook-off time before breaking cover and lobbing the bomb in the direction of the enemy gunners. The grenade exploded in midair, giving neither youth time to find cover. The shock wave from the high explosive charge separated an arm and head from one of the gangbangers while the other suffered a mouthful of fractured teeth and third degree burns across most of his upper body.

Bolan swept the muzzle of the Desert Eagle the breadth of the room and tracked on a fourth man who had escaped the full effect of the grenade. The gangbanger looked to be vying for a better position where he could flank Bolan but the room was sealed up tight as a drum, and he had nowhere to go. The crowd that had been inside gambling now rushed past Bolan and headed for the exit door. The Executioner ignored them, focused on neutralizing the threat at hand. The MS-13 gunner leveled his machine pistol at Bolan, but the soldier took him with a single round to the shoulder before the man got a shot off. The impact ripped a large hole through the meaty portion and knocked the weapon loose from the man’s grip.

Bolan swept the room once more with the smoking pistol but no further threats greeted him. He crossed the room where tables were overturned. Chips, cash, liquor and smoldering cigarettes had been strewed across the floor. Bolan vaulted the one table an MS-13 gangster had overturned and aimed the pistol point-blank at the surviving gunner’s forehead. He looked more like a kid than a grown man, with his acne-covered face and full head of slicked back hair, but Bolan marked him in his early twenties; yeah, definitely old enough to know better. He rolled on the floor, one hand covering his wounded shoulder, the blood oozing through his fingers and soaking his shirt sleeve as it left smudges on the floor around him.

“I have two questions for you,” Bolan said. “Answer them both truthfully and you live. Understand?”

The kid merely nodded.

“Question one. You work for Mario Guerra?”

“Sí… yes.”

“Good. Second question, did he order the hit on Gary Marciano?”

This time the kid said nothing. Bolan knew about the rules in the gang, that the penalty for informing on the gang with the cops was death. Frankly, Bolan didn’t see much difference from this kid’s point of view. If he ratted them out, they would surely hunt him down and kill him, and if he didn’t speak he was taking the chance Bolan would put a bullet through his head. While he might believe the latter or not, he could be certain that his homeys would kill him if he betrayed the code of silence.

“Check that,” Bolan said. “That’s not a fair question, so let’s try a different one. Suppose I wanted to buy some drugs. Where would I look?”

“Y-you don’t want to buy drugs.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Bolan replied. “But let’s just pretend that I do for a moment. Let’s say that I’m not asking you to give up anything you wouldn’t give up to some pimp or prostitute or coked up vagrant on the street. Right? Telling me where I can get some drugs isn’t giving anything up. You’d tell one of them, so you can tell me.”

“My homeboys will kill me if I say anything to you, man.”

Bolan put the hot muzzle of the gun against the kid’s cheek and kicked the kid’s hand away and stepped on his shoulder. “Let’s try it again. Where?”

The young man produced a blood-curdling scream and Bolan eased off the pressure. “Okay…okay!” the kid said between labored breaths. “Place is called Tres Hermanos, down on the strip east of here, borders Reston. It’s there…it’s there where you can buy. Now please, please stop!”

Bolan nodded and took his foot off the kid’s shoulder. He then reached to a medical pouch on his harness, withdrew a compress with bandage from it, tore open the thick paper wrapping with his teeth and quickly dressed the youth’s wound. He then stripped the kid of belt and shoes, checked him for any hidden weapons and then cleared out of there. Back in the main bar area, all the patrons had vacated the place and Bolan could hear sirens in the distance. He checked his watch, deciding not to hit the club right away. He wanted to give the cops a little time to catch up. For now, he would get a quick bite and then go visit this Tres Hermanos, see what kind of flies he could attract to the web.

The war had begun and time—for Mario Guerra—was running out.

BOLAN JUST FINISHED the last bite of his meal when the cellular phone on the seat next to him rang.

The Executioner wiped his fingers on a napkin before growling a short greeting into the receiver.

“Cooper, it’s Smalley,” the chief replied.

“Yeah.”

“I thought we had a deal, pal.”

“And what was that?”

“I thought you weren’t going to start shooting up my town.”

“I never said that,” Bolan replied. “And besides, it was only one rat hole I shot up in your town. I’m sure nobody will miss the business. You found my little greeting card?”

“The wounded banger?”

“That’s the one.”

“I did,” Smalley said. He let out a sigh and added, “But he lawyered up as soon as we read him his rights, so I don’t think he’s going to be talking to us any time soon.”

“I didn’t have any trouble getting the information I wanted from him.”

“Yeah, we heard all about that. First from the punk, then his attorney, and probably from the ACLU and a half-dozen other agencies in time for the early-morning edition of the Washington Post.”

“I needed to confirm a couple tidbits of intelligence and he was happy to cooperate,” Bolan said. “Now if you’re done, I have some new information. That Hillbanger admitted he was operating under orders from Mario Guerra. He also gave up the main location of this drug operation they’ve been running. And I ran your immigration problem by my own people. We think we’ve got a logical argument that the increased illegal immigrants are actually a pipeline opened by some heavy hitters overseeing MS-13 operations all through this country. I believe they’ve been using the pipeline to divert your attention away from their other activities.”

“In other words, you think they’ve been just waiting us out,” Smalley concluded.

“You nailed it.”

“Damn! I can’t believe we would have fallen for something like that!”

“Don’t beat up on yourself too much, Smalley,” Bolan replied easily. “There wasn’t any way you could’ve known, and even if you did, there was even less you could do about it. That whole thing falls into INS’s lap, and whoever’s overseeing MS-13 operations at the national level knows how bureaucratically mired that agency is.”

“So you really think there’s an overboss in this,” Smalley said matter-of-factly. “Like some kind of godfather of the Mara Salvatrucha?”