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?
Cooper leaned on the Pontiac’s horn, made no effort to brake as they sped toward the exit. She saw no cashier in the booth to their left, no one to raise the slender mechanical arm that was blocking their path. Beyond that fragile barrier, Pureza saw faces turned toward the sound of their horn and growling engine, people scattering.
And one who stood his ground, raising a gun.
“WHERE ARE THEY? CAN you see them?” Mutis barked into the mouthpiece of his hands-free two-way radio.
Static alone replied, at first, then one of his advance men—maybe it was Mondragón—answered, “They’re inside the garage. One of them, the man, took a shot at Edgar.”
“I’m all right,” Abello said, interrupting. “The bastard just grazed my arm. I’m on the street exit.”
“I’m going up to find them,” Serna added, sounding short of breath. “We have them now.”
“Make sure of it,” Mutis commanded, then swiveled to face his driver. “Why in hell aren’t we moving?”
“You see the street,” Fajardo said. “All that glass, eh? We can’t chase gringos on flat tires.”
“Then back up and go around the block, for Christ’s sake! Must I drive, as well as think?”
“No, sir!” Fajardo muttered something else as well, but Mutis couldn’t hear it and the car was moving, so he didn’t care. By then, he’d drawn a Walther MPK submachine gun from the gym bag at his feet, leaving its wire buttstock folded as he cocked the L-shaped bolt and set the selector switch for full-auto fire.
Fajardo boxed the block, first making an awkward and illegal U-turn in the middle of Carrera 11, then powered back to Calle 182, turned right and roared through the long block leading to Carrera 12. Another right turn there, and they were weaving in and out of traffic, letting pedestrians fend for themselves, in a mad rush northward to Avenida 82. There, he made a final right-hand turn and aimed the Mercedes back toward Carrera 11.
Time elapsed: five precious minutes.
“What is happening?” Mutis demanded, fairly shouting into the mouthpiece, although he knew it was unnecessary.
Hissing silence was the only answer for a moment, then Mondragón came back on the air, cursing bitterly. “Shit! They got out! Edgar’s down, maybe dead. I can’t tell.”
“Which way are they going?” Mutis asked, teeth clenched in his rage.
“Northbound, toward—”
Mutis lost the rest of it, as Fajardo shouted, “There!” He saw a grayish car speed past on Carrera 11, barely glimpsed the gringo driver’s profile in passing.
“Get after them!” he snapped at Fajardo. Then, into the mouthpiece, “You, too, Carlos! Run them down!”
“I’m on it!” Mondragón replied, with snarling engine sounds for background music.
Mondragón flashed past them in his blue Toyota Avalon, stolen for use as a spotter or crash car, as needed. He drove like a racer—and had been, on various tracks, before he recognized that El Padrino paid his drivers more than one could make on any local track.
Fajardo was talking to himself under his breath as he tromped down on the accelerator and sent the Benz squealing in pursuit. Mutis hoped that he wouldn’t spoil the paint job, but if forced to make a choice, he would protect his own skin every time.
Missing the targets with a bomb, by chance, could be explained. Letting them get away when they were dazed and wounded was another matter, altogether. And if they had killed one of his men…
Mutis refused to think about the punishment that might await him if he took that news back to Naldo Macario. Better to shoot himself first and be done with it, skipping the pain.
But better, still, to finish the job he had started and step on his targets like insects, grinding them under his heel.
The thought made Mutis smile.
SO FAR, SO GOOD.
Bolan had crashed through the garage retaining arm with no great difficulty, while Pureza took down the gunner who had challenged them with a decisive double tap. Falling, the guy had fired a burst that ricocheted from concrete overhead but missed the Pontiac completely, then they made the left-hand jog onto Carrera 11 and started the long northbound run.
It took only a moment for the first chase car to show up in the rearview mirror. Bolan knew it wasn’t just another car headed in their direction, from the way it raced to overtake them, nearly sideswiping a pickup and a motorcycle in the driver’s
