rose with her help. “She’s mexicana honoraria.”
“How do I get to be an honorary Mexican?”
The agent flashed bloody teeth. “You have made progress tonight.”
“Great. Can I have Cuah’s keys?”
LeCaesar’s smile fell from his face. “That man is a killer and a cannibal. I am not so sure that is a good idea.”
“I don’t want to carry him and you can’t.” Bolan shrugged. “Just his legs. So he can haul his own freight.”
The agent looked at Smiley, who nodded. LeCaesar agreed. “Sí.” He pulled a dog-tag chain bearing handcuff keys from beneath his armor.
Bolan unlocked Nigris’s hobble and leaned in close. “Don’t even think about it.” Nigris whimpered. Bolan could smell the fear on him sweating through his clothes, and he didn’t like it at all.
“Mole, I thought this guy was supposed to be a genuine badass.”
“He is.” LeCaesar didn’t like it either. “Or at least he was.”
Bolan hauled Nigris to his feet. “We need to find a vehicle.”
LeCaesar grabbed Nigris by the scruff of the neck and jammed his weapon in his back. “The next main street is that way.”
Headlights suddenly flared to brights as if on cue. The black sedan filled the narrow alleyway the way they had come. Smiley and LeCaesar opened up. Sparks walked across the Mercury’s hood and bullets chipped glass. “They’re armored!” Smiley shouted. Brights hit them from the other end of the alley and they were pinned between the rapidly closing bumpers. Bolan was out of antiarmor rounds for his grenade launcher.
Nigris broke free of LeCaesar and ran screaming down the alley, waving his arms. “¡Maricon!” the agent snarled, but he wasn’t willing to shoot his suspect.
“Cuah!” Bolan roared.
The black sedan accelerated. Nigris froze like a deer and the vehicle ran him down. He flew ten feet and the Mercury followed, grinding him to paste beneath its wheels. Both sedans advanced, putting Bolan, Smiley and LeCaesar in the big squeeze. The two agents fired without effect. There was nowhere to go. Bolan pulled a high-explosive grenade. Most civilian vehicle armor jobs were armored in the windows and body panels. Only the highest end military and diplomatic vehicles’ undersides were mine-proofed.
Bolan pulled the pin and went bowling for bad guys.
He counted down one second of fuse time and underhanded the grenade down the alley. It bounced beneath the bumper of the oncoming brown Mercury. The front of the Marquis lifted higher than any low-rider dared dream as the undercarriage was annihilated. “C’mon!”
Bolan was already charging. The sedan behind them roared with acceleration. The Executioner burned half his clip into the stricken Marquis’s windshield from the hip-assault position. He leaped onto the hood and helped up his companions. “Go!” They slipped over the hood and down the trunk. Bolan turned toward the oncoming juggernaut and emptied his weapon into the windshield. His rifle clacked open on a smoking empty chamber as the sedan hurtled in. Bolan jumped.
The brown sedan beneath his boots disappeared backward and was replaced by a black one. Metal flew. The black Mercury slammed to a stop and Bolan landed on the hood. The occupants were barely discernable behind the tinted glass. He reloaded his rifle and began to fire into the driver’s side point-blank. The twenty steel-core rounds bit into the armored glass, the last five punching through.
Bolan pulled his last frag, armed it and shoved the bomb through the coffee-cup-diameter hole his rifle rounds had dug.
The interior of the Mercury flashed yellow, then sprayed red; it filled with scything shrapnel with nowhere to go. Bolan reloaded his rifle, jumped down and clambered across the shattered vehicle. Smiley and LeCaesar were street side, and he trotted up and joined them. No cars were immediately in sight. Bolan took out his phone and made a called the Farm.
Back in Virginia, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered on the first ring. “Striker! Where are you? We’ve been monitoring the DEA com link. It’s blowing up, and Tijuana looks like a war zone.”
“We were made the second we left the safe house. We’re down eight DEA men and we lost the package. We got our hats handed to us, Bear, and right now I got a federale in real bad shape. I need you to vector me to a hospital, and I don’t want to meet bad guys, federales or anybody else on the way.”
“That’s going to be easier said than done. I have the real-time feed from the satellite the DEA is using. The streets are swarming with cops and soldiers. All Mexican police and federal frequencies are blowing up.”
“I figured.” Bolan glanced at a manhole. “Pull up a schematic of the Tijuana sewer system. I’m extracting underground.”
“Interesting.” Bolan could hear keys clicking on the Kurtzman’s side. “Give me a minute.”
“Copy that.” Bolan broke cover and walked over to the manhole. It looked as if it hadn’t been moved in years. It was baked into the street, and he didn’t have time to wrestle with it. The Executioner pulled an offensive grenade from his bandolier, pulled the pin and dropped the bomb. “Fire in the hole!” He ran back to the car and slid across the hood to cover. The night flashed orange. People in their homes screamed and every dog in the neighborhood started barking. Bolan rose from cover followed by his battered team. The manhole cover was gone and the hole it had covered had been somewhat enlarged. “You got something for me, Bear?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about sewer reception with your rig, so I’m just going to download the route to your phone. You’ll be on your own until you surface.”
“Copy that.” Smoke rolled out of the hole but even the acrid smell of burned high explosive couldn’t cover the septic stench that awaited them down in the darkness. Bolan watched as a dull green grid of lines began to scroll on the screen of his phone. His route suddenly highlighted in red. “Got it. Bree, Mole, c’mon.”
Smiley and LeCaesar limped to the hole and both of them wrinkled their noses in unison.
“Shit,” the DEA agent said.
“Mierda,” LeCaesar echoed.
Bolan considered the evening’s activities. Shit was right, and shit was all they had. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWO
Bree Smiley wasn’t smiling. She wouldn’t be quirking her eyebrow at anyone anytime soon, either. Blood leaked down her cheek as the Mexican intern sewed her left eyebrow back onto her face. Despite the blood and swelling, the DEA agent’s thoughts were clearly written on her face. She wasn’t happy. Bolan leaned in the door frame with his left hand bandaged. “You did good, Smiley.”
“We lost our prisoner and eight agents.”
“You survived.”
Smiley rolled an eye at the needle going in and out of her brow. “I got mutilated.”
“Scars are sexy.”
