Powder Burn

That still remained to be seen.

El Padrino’s estate was surrounded by seven-foot walls topped by broken glass set in concrete. The only access, through an ornate wrought-iron gate, was guarded by armed men around the clock. Their number varied: never less than two, sometimes six or seven if the need arose.

On this day, he counted five men on the gate, armed with the same Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles carried by members of Colombia’s Urban Counter-Terrorism Special Forces Group. The guns resembled something from a science fiction film, but Serna knew they were deadly, with a cyclic rate of 750 to 900 rounds per minute on full-auto fire.

Only the best for El Padrino’s personal guards.

As the limousine approached, one of the guards rolled back the gate by hand. Small talk within the family claimed that the gate had once been operated by remote control, with a motor and pulleys, until a power failure made El Padrino a captive within his own walls. Workmen had been routed from bed after midnight, in the midst of a fierce thunderstorm, to overhaul the system and return it to manual control.

Passing through that gate, Serna wondered if he would be breathing when he left the property. Or whether he would ever leave.

Another rumor claimed that El Padrino had a private cemetery on the grounds, or that he fed the bodies of the soldiers who displeased him into the red-hot maw of a specially designed incinerator, sending them off in a dark cloud of smoke.

Serna had smiled at those stories, with everyone else.

But he wasn’t smiling at this moment.

He barely registered the vast house, wooded grounds or soldiers on patrol in pairs, some leading dogs. The limo whisked along a driveway, circling the mansion to deposit Serna and his escorts at a service entrance, at the rear. Another pair of soldiers met them there and nodded for them to go inside.

At the last moment, as they crossed the threshold, Serna felt a sudden urge to bolt, run for his life, but where could he go? Surrounded by walls and by men like himself, who would kill without a heartbeat’s hesitation, what would be the point?

To make it quick, he thought, and shuddered.

“Are you cold, Jorge?” one of his escorts asked. The others laughed.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“We’ll see.”

They ushered him into a large room—were there any small rooms in the house?—with bookshelves on the walls rising from floor to ceiling. At the center of the room stood El Padrino, paging through a massive tome atop a bookstand. It looked like maps or some kind of atlas.

“Jorge,” Naldo Macario said, “thanks for coming.”

As if I had a choice, Serna thought. But he answered, “De nada, Padrino.”

“You’ve had a bad day,” his master said. “It shows on your face. May I offer you something? Tequila? Cerveza?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“So, direct to business then.” Macario approached him, smiling underneath a thick moustache, hair glistening with oil and combed back from his chiseled face. “You failed me, yes?”

Serna could see no point in lying. “That is true, Godfather.”

“I send five men to perform a simple task, and four are dead. The job is still unfinished. Only you remain, Jorge.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.”

Apologies were clearly pointless, but what else could he say? He had failed and survived, the worst combination of all.

“I know you’re sorry,” Macario said. “I see it in your eyes. But failure must have consequences, yes?”

Serna’s voice failed him, refused to pronounce his own death sentence, but he gave a jerky little nod.

“Of course you understand,” Macario went on. “Under normal circumstances, I would have you taken to the basement, and perhaps even filmed your punishment as an example to my other soldiers.”

Serna felt his knees go weak. It was a challenge to remain upright.

“But these,” El Padrino said, “are not normal circumstances, eh? For all your failings, it appears that I still need your help.”

“My help, sir?”

“You saw the American, yes? Before he killed the others and escaped, you saw his face?”

“I did, sir.”

“And you would recognize him if you met again?”

“I would.” He nodded to emphasize the point, seeing a small, faint gleam of hope.

“Then it appears that you must live…for the moment,” Macario replied. “Correct your error, find this gringo for me, and you may yet be redeemed.”

“Find him, sir?”

“Not by yourself, of course.” His lord and master smiled at that, the notion’s sheer absurdity. “With help. And when you find him, do what must be done.”

“I will, sir. You can count on it.”

“His life for yours, Jorge. Don’t fail a second time.”

THE SAFEHOUSE WAS AVERAGE size, painted beige, located on a cul-de-sac north of El Lago Park in Barrios Unidos. Bolan turned off Avenida de La Esmeralda and followed Pureza’s directions from there. She unlocked the garage, stood back to let him park the Pontiac, then closed the door from the inside.

They had been lucky with the G6, in the circumstances. It had taken only two hits, one of them a graze along the left front fender that could pass for careless damage from a parking lot, the other low down on the driver’s door. Nothing to raise eyebrows in Bogotá, where mayhem was a daily fact of life.

Pureza led the way inside, through a connecting door that kept the neighbors from observing anyone who came and went around the safehouse. They entered through a laundry room, into a combination kitchen–dining room that smelled of spices slowly going stale.

“You use this place for witnesses?” he asked Pureza.

“That, or for emergencies. I think this qualifies.”

“No clearance needed in advance?”

“If you are asking who knows we are here, the answer would be no one.”

“No drop-ins expected?”

“None.”

“Okay. Who knew about our meeting?” Bolan asked.