Crisis Nation. Don Pendleton

walls of the alley, and the Cadillac burned like a fallen tombstone. The alley resembled a side entrance to hell.

      Bolan heard the thump and hiss of ignition. The Cadillac was riddled with high-power rifle holes, and the jellied fuel of the firebombs was crawling all through it. Bolan slammed the kitchen door shut. “Down!”

      The Cadillac’s fuel tank detonated like a bomb. The door rattled on its hinges, and heat blasted through the shattered kitchen window hot enough to singe skin. Nacho screamed, his right foot kicked out from under the rug and clocked Gustolallo in the face. She rolled backward, stunned as Nacho got to his feet and ran screaming out of the kitchen with bits of fire still flickering on his feet.

      Gustolallo kneeled and snarled past her bloody lips and nose. “Bastardo!”

      Bolan shoved down the barrel of her shotgun.

      Roldan’s M-16 fired on rapid semiauto from the front of the house. “More firebombs out front! We got—” He stared back in surprise as Nacho ran screaming past him. Bolan made a quick throat-cutting motion. Roldan caught it and let Nacho get past. When the Executioner motioned with his own weapon to shoot high, Roldan’s M-16 snarled on full-auto and he roared, “Get back here, you son of a bitch!”

      Nacho sailed straight through the front window and onto the porch. Bolan advanced, firing. One of the three firebombers out front fell with one of Roldan’s bullets in his chest. The other two threw their bottles, but Roldan cracked one in flight and the other fell short and broke apart on the cobblestones in front of the house. Bolan checked his screen. Three of the four surviving vehicles were pulling out and driving away. Men on foot were fleeing in all directions. Nacho was heading due north and didn’t look like he was going to stop until he hit Bermuda.

      The back of the house was beginning to burn in earnest.

      Ordones rose, reloaded and handed his handkerchief to Gustolallo. She ruefully held it up to her bloody nose and stared over it at Bolan. “You’re just gonna let the little son of a bitch go?”

      Roldan glared over his shoulder from his position covering the front. “Yeah! What the fuck was that all about?”

      Ordones, on the other hand, glanced at Bolan slyly. “You’re tracking our little friend, aren’t you?”

      “Yeah.” Bolan shrugged. “I put a bug in his sling while I was binding him up. I figured I’d like to see where he runs to.”

      “He will run to his big brother, El León,” Ordones suggesed.

      “I’m hoping.”

      Roldan grinned uncharacteristically. “Fantástico.”

      Bolan turned to more immediate matters. “We’ve got to get out of here. As officers in the Puerto Rican police force, I’m afraid your superiors are going to want you to report in for questioning, and it’s only going to get worse the longer you stick around me.”

      Ordones folded the bipod of his weapon and rewrapped it in its blanket. “As of now I consider myself AWOL.”

      Gustolallo’s bloody nose wrinkled. “What’s AWOL?”

      “Absent Without Leave,” Ordones replied.

      Gustolallo nodded decisively. “Me, too.”

      Everyone looked at Roldan. The young cop was still grinning. “I been waiting for this all my life. Let’s do it!”

      Bolan nodded. He had a crew, and they had been bloodied in battle.

      Now it was time to take the war to the enemy.

      4

      Bolan cruised the BMW F650 Dakar motorcycle through the highlands. The capital city of San Juan was a pocket of stars below. He checked the screen of the phone attached to his wrist as they passed gated roads that led to the mansions of Puerto Rico’s rich and powerful. Yotuel d’Nico had reached the top echelons of the La Neta gangs, and not surprisingly, El León kept a home near the top of the mountain so he could look down upon his hunting grounds. Detective Gustolallo leaned in to Bolan’s back as he brought the bike to a stop. “Thank you for bringing me.”

      “Well, I might need some backup,” he said as he got off the bike. “Besides, Ordones won’t fit on the back of my bike and I figure Roldan wouldn’t feel much like spooning with me.”

      “After what happened in La Perla I think Roldan would be your date to the prom if you asked him.”

      “He’s a real hard charger,” Bolan said.

      “Oh, he’s always asking for the most dangerous assignments.”

      Bolan took in the cool wind of the Puerto Rican highlands. He could see d’Nico’s house in the distance. At least now he knew where his enemy slept.

      Leaning against the bike, Bolan frowned as he remembered his conversation with their quarry in La Perla.“Nacho threw out a name I didn’t recognize, Orishas Chango. Mean anything to you?”

      “Orishas? Chango? That’s Santería shit. It came from Africa when the Spanish brought in slaves. Orishas are like spirits or gods. It’s like Haitian voodoo but different. When La Neta and the other gangs aren’t busy claiming their Taino Indian ancestry they’re flirting with Santería. They like to claim the orishas give them power, but most of them are posers rather than true believers. They mostly just like to wear the jewelry, sport the tattoos and sprinkle chicken blood around to scare people.”

      Bolan flexed his Spanish. “So Orishas de Chango would be spirits of the spirit?”

      Gustolallo poked him in the side. “It only sounds redundant because you’re a Yanqui. What it means to someone on the streets of San Juan is that they’re spirits of the spirit Chango, like his outriders or emissaries or something.”

      “So what’s this Chango dude all about?”

      “Oh, he’s got a lot of qualities, or aspects. Chango’s the Sky Father, god of thunder and lightning, god of music and dance, of justice, war and a dozen other things. But since the name was coming out of Nacho’s drunken piehole, I’m thinking he was talking about Chango’s aspect as the god of revenge. His symbol is a double-headed ax.”

      Bolan turned to the detective. “Chango is the god of justice and revenge?”

      “Yeah—”

      “And his symbol is a double-headed African war ax?”

      “Yeah, and?” Gustolallo asked.

      “And people have been turning up without heads in the San Jose lagoon for the last month.”

      “Jesus…”

      “I think this is bigger than just the street gangs and the Macheteros. I think there’s a new group of enforcers in town and they’re our Orishas de Chango.”

      “Jesus. If the gangs aren’t running these guys then who is?”

      “The drug cartels, or maybe the independence terrorists, or both. I don’t know yet, but I’ve been getting an outside-orchestration vibe in what’s been happening. Someone wants to rip Puerto Rico right off its moorings, and they’re playing all the local political and race cards”

      “Okay, now you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

      Bolan excused himself and stepped away from Gustolallo as he tapped icons on the phone attached to his sleeve. The Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, appeared on a screen inset the size of a ravioli. Her brows rose sleepily as she peered into the webcam. “What’s going on, Striker?”

      “Barb, everyone’s been assuming that the recent beheadings in Puerto Rico are just copycat killings taken from the Mexican cartels. My problem is local CSI has done all the autopsies. I don’t think they’re totally reliable. Some may even be in on a fix. I need you to arrange a clean forensics team to reexamine any of the headless bodies still available.”

      Price