was true, she realized. The Viper Posse occupied this whole apartment complex. She sat in unit 227, bound to a straight-backed wooden chair with plastic zip ties. She could scream until her lungs bled, and the other yardies wouldn’t interfere with Channer’s fun. Nor would the neighbors, who’d been terrorized into submission when the Viper Posse routed tenants from the Palm Glades complex and converted it into their headquarters.
Police? Forget about them. They patrolled Kendall’s white neighborhoods routinely, but required an urgent call to trespass on Jamaican turf around Three Lakes. The last time they’d visited Palm Glades, it sparked a confrontation that sent nine yardies to jail, and seven coppers to the hospital. The gang was not evicted, though, because it kept a battery of top-end lawyers on retainer and possessed a bill of sale for the suburban property.
No. She was on her own, and that was bad.
Fatally bad.
She couldn’t bargain with the Viper Posse’s local honcho, couldn’t bribe her way out of the trap. Channer was bent on capturing her father’s territory, taking everything he had, and would not settle for a consolation prize.
She was a pawn to him—or worse, a living sacrifice.
“I don’t want to cut your head off first,” Channer said. “That spoils my game and tells your daddy he’s got nothing left to hope for. Mebbe I should start down on the other end, eh?”
Garcelle tried to imagine what it would feel like, having her feet cut off. Would she bleed out? Not likely, if her captors wanted her alive and suffering. A propane torch would cauterize the wounds, but searing would not stop infection. Not that it would help. Channer would no doubt dismember her completely, long before gangrene could end her misery.
Tell them no more than you have to, she thought grimly. Everybody breaks, but hold on as long as you can. Make the bastards work for it.
“Ten toes it is,” Channer declared, and moved off toward the doorway. He opened it and called to someone on the Other Side, “Gimme the little saw, brother. And one of those blue tarps.”
* * *
BOLAN HAD GONE all out, picking his tools for the Miami mission. Riding with him on the southbound highway was a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a Benelli M4 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun, a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum pistol, and his favorite Beretta 93R selective-fire sidearm. For long-range work, he’d picked a Barrett M98B sniper rifle. The Barrett is a bolt-action weapon, feeding .338 Lapua Magnum rounds from a ten-round detachable box magazine. Top off that ensemble with spare magazines all around, plus two dozen M68 fragmentation grenades, and the Executioner was ready to rumble.
His first target was a so-called social club, the Kingston House, located on Southwest 80th Street near Snapper Creek Park. Intel from Stony Man identified it as a hangout for the Viper Posse’s goons and part-time headquarters for Winston Channer, honcho of the posse in South Florida. Bolan could not predict if Channer would be in when he came calling, but he pegged the odds at fifty-fifty. Either way, demolishing the joint and taking out the posse soldiers he found on-site would send a message to the man in charge, and ultimately back home to Jamaica.
Bolan parked his Mercury a half block north of Kingston House, secured it and set the ear-splitting alarm. If all went well, he wouldn’t be gone long, and he’d return to find his rolling arsenal where he had left it. Otherwise, he’d have to improvise.
Leaving his ride, he took the Steyr AUG with an AAC M4-2000 suppressor attached, both handguns and a couple of grenades. It was supposed to be a hit-and-git, not a protracted battle, but he prepped for any snags he could imagine, and a few that didn’t come to mind immediately. Bolan’s protracted war had taught him that preparedness counted for more than luck.
The place looked dead as he approached it. Never meant to draw outsiders, the exterior was relatively drab: two stories, with beige stucco on the outside, a flat roof, no neon flashing in the night. Unless you were a Viper Posse member or associate, you had no reason to stop at Kingston House, and any trespassers would be discouraged in a most emphatic way.
He scouted the approach and found no guards watching the street. Given the state of modern CCTV cameras, lookouts might well be watching him from inside, but Bolan wasn’t bothered by that possibility. He was expecting opposition.
Counting on it.
He walked behind the club, bringing the Steyr out from underneath his lightweight raincoat. It had drizzled off and on all day, reason enough to wear the coat that hid his hardware, but the time had come to let it rip.
Bolan tried the back door, found it locked and fired a muffled 3-round burst into its dead bolt, shattering the lock. He followed through without a second’s hesitation and found himself inside a corridor that passed a kitchen on the left and restrooms on the right. Apparently no one was using either of the two facilities just now. Ahead of him, Bolan heard voices coming from some kind of rec room, half a dozen by the sound of it, engaged in a friendly argument. Above his head, the sound of footsteps told him there were other posse members on the second floor. There was a heady scent of ganja in the air.
“That girl’s hot,” one of the possemen was saying, “know what I mean?”
“You’re speaking true,” another said.
“I wouldn’t lie to ya,” the first voice said.
Bolan crashed the party, counting seven heads around a pool table. He was quiet till one of them spotted him and squawked a warning to the others. Then he began to take them down with nearly silent 5.56 mm NATO rounds. They scrambled, seeking cover, groping for their weapons.
First to draw his pistol was a porky soldier with a rainbow-colored Rasta cap atop his head. Before he had a chance to aim, Bolan’s next burst sheared off the left side of his face, but the soldier still managed one wild shot as he was falling, wasted on the ceiling. A shout up there told Bolan that the club’s other inhabitants were on alert and pounding toward the stairs.
* * *
“WHAT’S THAT?” WINSTON CHANNER demanded, standing over his captive with a hacksaw in his hand.
“Sounds like your boys are shooting each other,” Garcelle Brouard told him, smiling.
Channer swung his free hand, striking her across the right cheek. Spitting blood, Garcelle supposed she was fortunate he hadn’t used the saw.
“Big man,” she sneered, with crimson lips. “Untie me, and we’ll see how tough you are.”
“I’m gonna fix this, then come back and fix you, hear me?”
“Big talk,” she spat at him, expecting to be struck again, but Channer turned away, setting the hacksaw on a nearby table as he left the room. A moment later, he was back again, drawing a switchblade from his pocket, snapping it open as he moved behind her chair.
“Looks like your daddy sent his man to fetch you home. I’ve got a big surprise for him. He’s as good as dead.”
She felt the blade pass through the plastic ties that held her arms behind the chair. Then the knife was at her throat, the point drawing a bead of blood below her jawline on the right. Channer’s free hand gripped her hair as she slowly rose to stand beside him, measuring her chances of escape.
Not
