Crisis Nation. Don Pendleton

were performed with a machete or an ax.” Bolan had seen enough headless bodies to know there would be a difference. “A machete would make a chopping wound and probably take several cuts. An ax would leave impact and shearing trauma in the surrounding tissues, and used with any skill would be a one-cut proposition.”

      “I’ll have Hal contact San Juan’s special agent in charge.”

      “The FBI is mostly local. I’d rather have you get in touch with the CIA station chief.”

      Price sighed. Despite all efforts to the contrary since the events of 9/11, inter-service rivalry was still rife in the U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement communities. Many Puerto Ricans considered themselves Americans, and both the Puerto Rican law enforcement and the public at large believed, and not without some merit, that the CIA presence on the island was there to spy on the citizenry. “That could ruffle some feathers.”

      Bolan shrugged. “I don’t care.”

      “Hal’s going to care.” Price sighed. “So will the State Department, and probably the President.”

      “They’ll care more about who’s behind all this.”

      She knew Bolan was right. “I’ll have an autopsy report for you within twenty-four hours.”

      “Thanks, Barb. Striker out.”

      THE LION LOOKED at his kid brother, and what he saw didn’t please him. Nacho had turned eighteen that year and for six months had been pestering incessantly for an opportunity to move up. Yotuel had finally relented. Killing Inspector Constante, which had needed doing for some time anyway, was to have been Nacho’s ticket into the big leagues. It had turned into a slaughter. El León sighed heavily. So had the rescue operation to get Nacho back. The young man sat flinching and unable to look into his big brother’s eyes. The room was dark except for two small ceiling lamps that illuminated each man at the table. Other men hovered back in the darkness. Yotuel eyed his brother again. Nacho’s nose was broken, his arm was in a sling and his shoes and his pants were scorched black. Yotuel’s nose wrinkled and his down-curved lips curled with contempt.

      Nacho stank of rum.

      Yotuelo sighed again. “Brother, what am I to do with you?”

      The two men could not have been more different. Nacho was a sack of chicken bones in a very expensive designer track suit. Yotuel, El León, looked every inch his nickname. He was a lion of a man, over six feet tall with a wide brow and a protruding lower jaw. He’d had his hair straightened, and it fell around his shoulders in a blue-black mane in the style of the Taino Indian ancestry he claimed. Taino tribal tattooing crawled down his heavily muscled arms entwined with La Neta prison tattoos. His symbol of power was a seventeenth-century Spanish lance head he carried thrust under his belt. The socket was wrapped with leather cord to make a hilt. Catholic saints’ medals and beaded Santería fetishes hung from it in braids. The two-foot steel blade was pitted and brown with age execpt for the edges, which gleamed like mercury from sharpening.

      He drew the antique iron and began cleaning his fingernails with the needle-sharp point. “Tell me about the cops.”

      Nacho eyed the spear blade nervously. “One was an old man, but tall, tall like a tree, like he should’ve played in the NBA or something.”

      “Flaco Ordones.” Yotuelo nodded. He knew him. Ordones came on like a kindly grandfather with suspects, but he was the same old-school-style cop as Constante. “And the others?”

      “I knew one of them.” Anger kindled in Nacho’s eyes. “That goddamn Roldan.”

      Yotuel knew Roldan by reputation. Ruzzo “el Santo” Roldan was a cop, reportedly unbribable and a former Latin King. As far as Yotuel was concerned, that was strike one, strike two and strike three.

      “The other was that bitch, Gustolallo.”

      The Lion smiled slightly. Detective Guistina Gustolallo. The redheaded cop had used her beauty to run several very successful undercover stings against the Puerto Rican drug cartels until her face had become too well-known, and she had gone on to make detective. Like a lot of criminals in Puerto Rico, El León harbored some fantasies of getting his hands on Gustolallo when she wasn’t wearing her badge and gun. Yotuel put those fantasies aside for later. “And the Yanqui?”

      Nacho shuddered. “Mother of God, brother, you should have seen this dude.”

      “Brother, you were supposed to kill this dude,” Yotuel stated.

      Nacho stared glumly at his blackened sneakers.

      “Perhaps you would like a second chance?”

      What Nacho would’ve really liked was the first flight to Miami, where he could spend a couple of weeks getting lap dances, betting on jai alai and restoring his shattered nerves.

      A long sigh rumbled out of Yotuel’s thick chest. “But then, with what has happened tonight, perhaps it is best if we lie low for a little while.”

      Nacho nodded vigorously. He obviously thought lying low was an excellent plan.

      “Tell you what, brother,” Yotuel continued. “We need to get you out of sight for a while. I’m going to send you to Miami. We’ll have a doctor fix your nose. Set your arm. Then you rest up. I’ll send for you in a week and then we will kill this Yanqui asshole together.”

      Nacho sagged with relief. “Thank you, brother—I mean, yes! We will kill him! We will kill him together!”

      “Yes.” Yotuel nodded with more conviction than he felt. He turned to one of his men. “Raciel, go with him. Have Mario fly you, and take Cuco. You two? You will have my little brother’s back.”

      “Yes, Yotuel. Like he is our own little brother.” Raciel was short, violent, built like a fire hydrant and he considered Nacho worse than useless. However, Raciel liked Florida, blond strippers and jai alai, and Nacho spent money like water. There were worse jobs than a one-week mission babysitting him in Miami. Raciel jerked his head at Nacho and they left the room.

      A man came out of the shadows from behind Yotuel. He was knife-thin with brush-cut gray hair, and he radiated command presence. “Your little brother is a liability.”

      “I have known that for eighteen years,” the Lion rumbled. He glared at his visitor. “What are you suggesting?”

      The thin man smiled, but his flat black eyes were as cold as a shark’s. “I am suggesting we turn him into an asset.”

      One normally cruel corner of Yotuel’s mouth turned up in amusement. “If you can do that, then you really are an orisha.”

      The visitor’s smile reached his eyes. “Oh, but I am.”

      5

      Safehouse, San Juan

      “The decapitations were performed wth an ax.” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman transmitted some very gruesome autopsy photos of the bodies Bolan had witnessed being pulled from the lagoon. Technical medical data scrolled down a sidebar, listing vertebral splintering, soft tissue compression and shearing and frontal bruising of the trachea. Bits of wood had been compressed into the front of the remaining neck tissue. What it meant was that someone had bent the necks of three U.S. Military Policemen over a stump and taken their heads like they’d been splitting kindling.

      Kurtzman highlighted some of the text. “There was metal residue in some of the sheared bone. The ax was made out of iron.”

      That was interesting. “Not steel?”

      “No, the CIA had one of their metallurgy specialists run it. The weapon was smelted through traditional African methods.” Kurtzman warmed to his subject. “The African Iron Age preceded Europe’s by four centuries or more, but once they’d established their smelting methods they didn’t change much. Smelting in sub-Saharan Africa was always artisanal and guarded by secretive guilds. Just about every piece forged, from an ax to a hoe blade to a spear