Blood Dues (13 page)

The Executioner's mind was already racing away from the smoky killing ground toward the final stop along his hellfire journey through Miami.

The soldier had some final business to transact with Toro yet, before he called it quits and started looking for another hellground.

Toro was waiting for him, right, and Mack Bolan could not afford to be late. The fate of his mission could be hanging in the balance, still undecided, and the soldier never left a job unfinished.

Bolan closed his eyes and waited for Grimaldi to find him through the smoke.

Raoul Ornelas knew his time was coming. He was seated in the rear of Toro's ancient Cadillac with one of Toro's commandos close behind him. Toro and his wheelman in the front, the renegade was searching for a way to save himself before his captors got down to their final business of the day.

They had not bound his hands or feet, leaving him free to move, but the
soldado
on his right had a Browning 9mm automatic pistol cradled in his lap, its muzzle pointed casually toward the floor. The gunner was pretending to stare distractedly out of the window now, but Ornelas had no doubt of what would happen if he tried to extricate himself.

They had been driving aimlessly around Miami for better than an hour, finally pulling into Lummus Park, just west of the North-South Expressway. The driver nosed the Caddy into a turnout overhung with trees; directly to their front were a barbecue and several deserted picnic tables.

It was a peaceful scene — and they had brought him there to kill him.

Ornelas was sure of it. There was no other explanation. If they had intended to deliver him to the police, he would be looking out through bars right now, instead of staring through a dirty windshield at abandoned picnic tables.

The knowledge that they meant to execute him compelled Ornelas to consider desperate action. They would shoot him if he tried to escape — and if he did not make the effort, they would kill him all the same.

With all the odds against him now, he saw no reason not to try. That they seemed to be waiting for someone or something might provide him with the hairbreadth opportunity he needed to effect his getaway.

Toro's men had searched him at the house, but they had overlooked the hidden knife that he habitually carried. It was disguised as a belt buckle, and its two-inch double-edged blade fit tightly into a built-in sheath, parallel to his waistline. One simple twist, a gentle pull....

Ornelas shifted restlessly on his seat, bringing both hands together in his lap. The gunner beside him did not stir, but Ornelas caught one of the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror pinning him briefly, then looking away. Ornelas's right hand inched up to find the buckle, finally clamped around it, locking down.

Timing was of the essence; he had the slimmest fraction of a chance if he was swift and coordinated enough — if he still had the skill he once possessed when he fought side by side with Toro in the jungles.

A different jungle now, oh yes, and they were no longer
compadres.
The world had turned, and one of them had been left far behind.

Ornelas took a deep breath and held it, clenching his muscles, praying that the guard beside him could not feel him trembling and become alarmed. The blood was pounding in his ears, deafening him. He felt that he might faint at any moment.

A twist and tug. The stainless blade came free, and he was moving, pivoting in his seat, sweeping the stubby dirk around and over in a vicious two-handed thrust. The gunner was reacting, feeling rather than seeing the death blow as he began his countermove.

The razor tip disappeared into dusky flesh, its passage lubricated by a spill of crimson as Ornelas found the jugular instinctively, ripping back and forth with furious strength, opening the gunner's veins and airway, watching as the wound expelled a single glistening bubble.

The bubble burst as Ornelas withdrew the blade, already craning forward, slashing at Toro in profile as the warrior turned to face him. The knife glanced off a cheekbone, shearing through an eyeball, knicking the bridge of Toro's nose before ripping free. Toro jerked away, bringing one hand up to clasp the spurting wound.

Ornelas never faltered, twisting in his seat again, driving the dagger deep into the hairy base of the wheelman's skull. The driver screamed, his back arching in agony, both hands coming up and back, trying to remove the blade that had been wedged in deep between his vertebrae.

Ornelas left it there, lunging for the Browning that had fallen down between his closest captor's feet. He reached it, thumbed the hammer back, already pushing himself backward, against the door, one hand clawing at the latch while he thrust out the gun with his other.

He shot the back-seat gunman in the temple, taking no chances that he might still be alive. The young man's skull exploded, sending scarlet streamers out the open window beside him.

Now Ornelas had the door open, sweeping on with the pistol and jamming it against the dying driver's skull.

He squeezed the trigger twice, explosive impact hurling the dead man forward, smashing his ruined face against the steering wheel with a resounding thump. Ornelas was deafened by the gun blasts fired in close confinement, his ears ringing.

Toro was turning to face him again, his pistol already nosing up over the back of his seat as Ornelas tumbled backward through the open door. He fired wildly through the seat cushions into Toro's ravaged face, aiming at his one remaining eye and finding it with point-blank rounds. Already dead or dying, Toro got off a single shot that plowed a bloody furrow under Ornelas's left arm, driving him out of the car.

Ornelas sat there for a moment, stunned, then slowly found his feet. He clutched one arm against his side, to stanch the flow of blood from the in-and-out wound in his side.

Cursing, he leaned back inside the car and pumped three more rounds into Toro's lifeless head, finally backing away, faltering. He was giddy with elation at his close escape, already feeling shock from loss of blood. He was alive, damn right, but he would have to find a doctor soon.

He lurched onto the narrow roadway that wound through the park, deserting the Caddy and its lifeless passengers. There was a sound, a movement, something that he knew he should recognize and take into account, but his disordered mind could not assimilate the data pouring in upon him.

Mack Bolan caught the turnoff into Lummus Park and shifted down, putting Evangelina's little drop-top through the gears smoothly, powering into a gentle curve. He was looking forward to the meet with Toro and Ornelas. It would be his last chance to get some answers in Miami.

He'd get the final evidence to tie the Cuban embassy and DGI in with the near-atrocity on Key Biscayne, damn right, and once he had it, he would be equipped to place the full responsibility where it belonged.

There were authorities that he could get in touch with, secretly, of course. Some newsmen who would plant a story without asking too many embarrassing questions of the source. But he would need the proof, and Raoul Ornelas was his ticket to the final grand slam in Miami's tournament of death.

Bolan took the little fiery sportster along the curving path that wound in and out through the park, passing a couple of early-morning campers on the way. A tropic sun was burning off the morning mists now, and he knew it was going to be a beautiful day.

For someone, right.

The drive was narrowed down to two lanes when he spied the Cadillac ahead. From fifty yards, he saw some sort of frantic struggle going on inside there. At forty yards a man tumbled backward, out the rear door on the driver's side, exchanging shots with one or another of the occupants.

The gunner rose, firing back inside the car again, then turned to make a break for freedom.

In a flash the Executioner knew exactly what was happening, and who the stranger was. He knew that he was too damned late to put the pieces back in place again, and blind mind-warping fury took over in a heartbeat.

He tromped on the convertible's gas pedal, driven back into his seat by the sudden surge of power, holding the wheel steady and aiming directly for the armed pedestrian who somehow, incredibly, did not seem to hear or see him.

A last-second correction, and he hit the guy dead center, rolling him up across the hood so that his skull impacted on the windshield, cracking the safety glass and staining it with his blood. Ornelas lay draped across the hood like some horrendous hunting trophy when the sportster came to rest another sixty feet along the path.

Bolan exited from the car and jogged back to the Caddy, bending down to glance in through the open doorway at the slaughterhouse inside. He did not have to check for pulses or move the bodies to know he was looking at a carload of corpses.

The Executioner had seen it all before, right, too damn many times.

Bolan straightened up, turning away from that vehicle of death, staring back along the little sports car's track. The flame-red shark was waiting for him there, Raoul Ornelas draped across its nose and going nowhere.

The Executioner felt hollow, drained. The battle for Miami had been too expensive for his taste — and still, he had not reached the end of it.

The was still a tab remaining to be paid for all the carnage, still a debt remaining to be cleared. He knew, with grim certainty, exactly where to send the check.

With long determined strides, he started back in the direction of the sports car.

Jorge Ybarra sipped at his champagne and made a mental note to recommend that buyers for the embassy try out a different brand in the future.

He resisted the urge to make a sour face at the insufferable swill, smiling instead at the uncomprehending wife of a minor-league African ambassador. One never knew exactly what emerging nations might regard as an insulting gesture; better to put on a brave face, and be sociable despite the hour and the endless, soporific conversation.

Ybarra was becoming sick of embassy engagements, almost longing for the simpler days when everything was cut and dried, life being lived on the edge of disaster, fighting for something one believed in. The sitting around, the verbal sparring matches, were something that the cultural attache would never become accustomed to, he knew.

He had not been disheartened by the failure of his plans for Key Biscayne. The
marielistas
were expendable, of course, and no one in Havana — or in Moscow, for that matter — would be likely to protest his cash expenditures considering the propaganda they could make from open warfare in the streets.

It had not been a total waste, although the knowledge of his failure had been personally unsettling. One did not advance upward through the ranks by watching long-term plans disintegrate.

He wondered just exactly how the Mafia had tumbled to his plan, and why the ranking local
capo
had decided to interfere. It made no sense, but then again, the gangster's presence at the killing scene had guaranteed some headlines for the bungled coup.

Not as many as it would have rated with successful executions, naturally, but still, it was better than nothing.

The waiter, Andres, appeared to rescue him from the midst of an interminable joke the Africans were trying to complete with no success. There was a phone call for him, and the caller would give no name other than Jose, insisting that he must speak with the cultural attache at once.

Ybarra graciously excused himself, feigning minor irritation as he made his apologies to the African delegation. In truth, he was looking forward to some words with Raoul Ornelas, a chance to be rid of the dreadful champagne once and for all.

He told Andres curtly that he would take the call in his office, already moving for the stairs, brushing through the tuxedoed crowd at a fast walking pace.

He mounted the stairs, rehearsing in his mind exactly what he planned to tell Ornelas. The man deserved a reprimand, but yet, if he escaped arrest on this fiasco, he might still be useful in the future.

Ybarra reached his office door, unlocked it with the special key that he alone possessed. No other cultural attache in the world was quite so jealous of his secrets as the slim man from Havana.

He closed the door behind him, lost in the gloom for a moment until he found the light switch, flicked it on. After the darkness of the tomb, it took his eyes an instant to adjust — but he immediately saw that there was something wrong.

His eyes narrowed against the sudden glare, and he discerned something on his desk, a bulky object... not unlike a football. He took a closer step, frowning... and he recognized the severed head of one Raoul Ornelas, wide eyes gaping at him sightlessly, the mouth twisted into one last grimace, hair matted down with drying blood.

Ybarra felt the scream rising in his throat, but vomit choked it off. He was gagging, backing away from the desk on unsteady legs, when a subtle scraping sound behind him alerted him to danger.

He spun around, mouth dropping open at the sight of a tall man, dressed in skintight black, emerging from behind the open office door. The intruder's face was blackened with cosmetics, eyes as cold as death itself — and the automatic pistol in his rising fist was silencer-equipped.

Jorge Ybarra never heard the shot that killed him.

Document ID: c989c524-d11b-4ad4-8da9-4690c3f27b51

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