handgun. They didn’t get much more powerful and reliable than the Colt in .38 Super.
Asado grabbed a handful of Diceverde’s shirt and shoved him through the door as an assault rifle poked through the window frame. She opened fire on the weapon in the portal, her pistol blazing like the sun. Bullets chopped just an inch over Diceverde’s head, letting him know just how close he had come to dying. His stocky legs propelled him through the doorway and the front door to the building opened, a black shadow appearing in front of him.
The journalist saw the unmistakable profile of an AK-47 in the man’s hands, and Diceverde triggered the Colt twice. The .38 Super roared in the darkness, creating bright strobes of light. The rifleman jerked, and Diceverde wasn’t sure if he had scored hits or not.
A muzzle-flash flared from the mouth of the AK, but it was stretched and elongated. Having been present for enough gunfights, the little reporter knew that the shots had been discharged into the ceiling. Diceverde triggered the Colt twice more, cracking out 125-grain hollow-point rounds at well over 1300 feet per second, aiming just behind the origin of the muzzle-flash. He was glad he’d spent the money on having night-sights installed on the shiny pistol. By following the vibrant neon-green dot hovering in the distance between the more indistinct yellow rear dots, he knew exactly where he was aiming.
A strangled cry filled the air and the rifle clattered to the floor.
Thunderbolts launched from behind Diceverde and he jerked his attention to another figure in the door, which was writhing as Magnum projectiles speared through his body, soft, exposed lead peeling apart on contact with fluid biomass and tunnelling horrendous cavities through the chest of another gunman.
Diceverde ran to the door and pressed his broad back to the wall to the side. He took the momentary break to drop his half-empty magazine and pocket it, feeding a new stick of nine shots into the Colt.
He heard the clicking of metal as somewhere in the shadows, Blanca Asado reloaded the partially spent AK-47.
“We’ll need the firepower,” Asado stated.
“Blanca…” Diceverde began.
The words he intended to say were ripped from his memory as the wall suddenly exploded behind him, concussive forces hurling him to the floor, his vision blurring.
CHAPTER TWO
The Executioner snipped chain links in the fence with his multitool, a sharp, powerful vise for cutting wire set at the base of the folding pliers. The circle of fence fell away, and he crawled through the hole.
He’d left his Barrett and the confiscated G3 behind in the truck, knowing that going in, he needed stealth and their added bulk would make his large, powerful frame even more noticeable. Still, he had the wicked Beretta 93-R machine pistol with its 20-round capacity and blunt suppressor under his arm, and the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding on his hip. Both handguns had been chosen by Bolan for their power and range. The Desert Eagle had proved itself a killer at out to two hundred yards, and the Beretta 93-R was a match for any submachine gun in his skilled hands, out to one hundred yards.
Though it was the Executioner’s plan to bring a fatal, final judgment to the commander of the smuggling forces who’d returned to the base, there was the possibility of uninvolved, honest Mexican soldiers staffing this facility. Opening fire without proper identification would put innocent blood on Bolan’s hands.
Luckily, aside from his pistols, Bolan also had various knives, garrottes and impact tools, truly silent means of delivering death. He saw the last of the trucks pull toward the motor pool, overladen with soldiers. All it would take would be one grenade to eliminate the smuggling military men, but before Bolan took out the enemy commander, he needed to get answers out of the man. A grenade might not leave enough left of the traitorous military leader to question, and an open gunfight would result in a conflict with soldiers whose duty was the defense of the base, not pushing heroin across the border.
Stalking closer, a shadow among shadows, Bolan closed on the group as soldiers disgorged from the truck.
He got within ten yards of the milling soldiers, his comprehension of Spanish more than sufficient to understand what was being said.
“We lost a third of the heroin,” one of the men reported.
“Juarez is going to be mad as hell,” the commander replied. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“We? You’re the one who ran away from one man,” the subordinate countered.
“Is that so?” the commander asked.
“Wait. Munoz…Hold on…”
A muzzle-flash lit up the accuser’s face an instant before it dissolved into a crater of spongy gore. Munoz lowered his .50-caliber Desert Eagle and looked around. “Any of the rest of you want to accuse me of running away?”
“No!” came the unanimous response.
“Good,” Munoz replied. “I’ll be in my office, contacting the cartel about the difficulties we’ve had tonight. In my version, we were struck by a significant force. It seemed as if they were Santa Muerte cultists.”
The soldiers nodded.
“Get the heroin stored away for our next trip. We’ll see if the part of the shipment left behind was touched. I doubt it. The Border Patrol wouldn’t cross two hundred yards into our territory to take out 150 kilos of Mexican Brown,” Munoz concluded. “Remember—Santa Muerte cultists ambushed us.”
It was one way for the commander to save face. The punctuation of his statement remained the dead man, his skull hollowed out by a thundering 350-grain bullet. Any deviation and the corpse would be joined by more. And apparently Munoz was in such a position of power that he could get away with burning his own men to the ground with impunity.
“I’m going to hit the bathroom,” another man said. His authority among the others was sufficient that he was able to slack off menial tasks to take care of biological functions, and the minions below him didn’t dare do more than grumble under their breath.
Bolan decided to shadow the loner instead of going right to Munoz. Kurtzman would contact him via his vibrating pager if anything of urgent interest were reported. The Farm undoubtedly had hacked into the phone system to spy on any communications coming in or going out, sifting for nuggets of gold in the streams of data running along fiber-optic wires.
The second in command had stepped into the latrine and begun to relieve himself when the Executioner snapped a powerful arm around his throat, pressure on his larynx strangling off a cry of dismay. Bolan rested the sharp edge of his commando knife across the Mexican’s brow and cheek.
“If you make a sound other than to answer my questions, I’ll carve out your left eye and saw off your nose in one slice. Comprende?” Bolan inquired.
“Yes,” the Mexican soldier rasped softly in English. Facial mutilation, especially the threat to his eye, had cowed the smuggler for now.
“How many on the base are in on the heroin pipeline?” Bolan asked.
“There used to be a dozen more,” the man began.
A hard push and blood trickled from the officer’s brow into his eye. A strangled whimper escaped.
“Minus
