The chopperâs engine clanked and screamed
Grimaldi bellowed as he fought the stick. âWeâre going down!â
MacLeod burst apart like a water balloon, turning the cabin interior into a charnel house. Bolan could feel Smiley bleeding out in his arms. Chet was screaming hysterically. âYou bastards! You bastards!â
The Devil had come for his due.
The helicopter soared over a sandy beach and spun nauseatingly. She skipped like a stone as one of her skids hit an outcropping. Grimaldiâs voice was uncommonly desperate. âBrace for impact!â
The helicopter hit.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
âEdmund Burke
1729â1797 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
Some forms of evil are more obvious than others. My taskâand that of my associatesâis to take on all comers until the puppetmaster is exposed. Then Iâll mete out my brand of justiceâhell on Earth.
âMack Bolan
Tijuana, Mexico
The three-car prisoner caravan wended its way through the potholed backstreets. Bolan rode shotgun in an unmarked, armored Bronco. It was 4:00 a.m., and the Tijuana back alleys still bustled in a sloggy way with drunken, bleary-eyed tourists either looking for a last, ugliest bit of action or staggering away from it. The dens of sin didnât bother to promote themselves with neon lights or pamphlet-waving hawkers pimping strip shows as on the main strip. Displaying the wares was frivolous excess at this time of night and in this part of town. It was old school Tijuanaâgraffitied brown adobe walls, an occasional bare bulb and small, dark doorways. If you were here and had money, you had already picked your perversion. You just walked through a door and the wares found you.
Bolan glanced back at âthe package.â
Prisoner Cuauhtemoc âCuahâ Nigris wasnât a happy man. Nigris was the last of the âBaja Barbacoas,â a quartet of Mexican cartel contract killers who specialized in kidnapping their victims and slow-roasting them alive in a traditional Mexican open pit barbeque covered with maguey agave leaves. The fact that a man who had terrorized the Baja Peninsula from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, and was rumored to have eaten parts of his victims, had been reduced to the shivering cold sweats was cause for concern. Then again, all three of Cuahâs fellow accomplices had been caught, and despite the best efforts of the Mexican authorities, the three had been shot, poisoned and garroted while in custody, and adding insult to injury, they had all had their heads removed at some point before they went into the ground. Nigris was the last of his culinary killing quartet and, in desperation, had broken the cartel code of silence. He agreed to spill everything he knew about anything and everybody if they would only extradite him to the perceived safety of the United States.
Nigris flinched under Bolanâs scrutiny.
Babysitting was one of Bolanâs least favorite activities, particularly when the mark was a torturer and cannibal, but the powers that be in the Justice Department wanted Nigris, and they wanted him badly. He was a potential goldmine of information. Three of the four were dead. The Justice Department wanted some life insurance for Nigris and Hal Brognola had asked Mack Bolan to be the manâs personal policy.
Bolan sized up the policyholder.
Cuah Nigris was a light heavyweight in size and stature. Gang tattoos crawled over most exposed surfaces of his body, including his shaved head. His almond-shaped eyes revealed his Aztec heritage, and at the moment they were flared wide in fear as he sat shackled hand and foot in the back of the SUV.
PolicÃa Federal Preventiva agent Majandro âMoleâ LeCaesar sat next to him. The PFP agent was armed and armored and wearing black battle fatigues. His dark skin and brownish-red Afro betrayed a lot of African blood, and âMole,â the national chocolate sauce of Mexico, was a nickname he wore with pride. Bolan had liked the man immediately. LeCaesar in return regarded the mysterious American with the gravest of suspicion. It was a sign of how desperate things were getting that the PFP would allow an agent to go dark on an American prisoner transfer. LeCaesar kept the muzzle of his MP-5 jammed into Nigrisâs ribs and his eyes on the streets.
Bolan turned his attention to Agent Smiley.
It wasnât the most onerous task in the world.
Drug Enforcement Administration agent Cambrianna âBreeâ Smiley was short and dark with big brown eyes, big cheekbones, big lips and pretty much a big everything packed into a small frame. She was a woman who looked good in body armor. The words Mexican firecracker came to mind except for the fact that she was Irish and happened to tan well. Just about every national law enforcement and intelligence agency in the world kept a few lookers on the roster. Certain situations worked best with a beautiful woman on the team, but Smiley was more than window dressing. She had done a tour in Afghanistan in 2007 with the DEAâs Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams, or FAST, and Bree Smiley won a reputation as a problem solver.