LITMIR.BIZ

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they had been at Las Cocinitas—but surprisingly there didn’t seem to be much activity in this part of town. Then he remembered it was Saturday and this was the calm before the storm. Very shortly, the place would be teeming with people and the entire area would turn into a hubbub of activity.

      Bolan stowed the binoculars and then stepped from the darkness of the rickety building into the twilight, now fading into night. The Executioner dashed across the street and reached the motel entrance unseen. He took a quick look inside, taking in the layout of the lobby—just as Encizo had described it. A petite Cuban girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen, maintained the front counter. Encizo indicated he’d spied a larger person in an adjoining office, male, maybe mid-to late-forties. Bolan figured a father-daughter team, although such an age difference in a married couple wouldn’t have surprised him.

      Bolan opened the door and moved silently indoors. He crossed the lobby in three steps and withdrew the Beretta 93-R from shoulder leather. The girl looked up just as he reached the counter. She sucked in a breath and her jaw dropped, but a finger to his lips while he kept the pistol in plain view extinguished any thoughts she might have to cry out. Bolan vaulted the counter and gently steered the girl into the office by the arm. A man scribbling furiously at the desk looked up and surprise mixed with panic registered on his face. At that proximity, Bolan could see he was older than the Executioner originally surmised. The man started to speak to Bolan in Spanish.

      “Quiet,” Bolan ordered him. He softened his voice as he put the girl in a chair against a nearby wall.

      “¡No lastimar por favor a mi tío,” she said. “He no speak English.”

      So he was her uncle. “I won’t hurt him. Will you tell him that?”

      She did, and then Bolan said, “There are two men upstairs, Americans, under police guard. Yes?”

      The girl nodded.

      “How many?” he asked.

      “What?”

      “How many policemen?”

      She held up three fingers and replied, “Three.”

      Bolan nodded. It looked like the commandant had told Encizo the truth. The three cops weren’t really the problem, though, as much as the fact he had no idea on the conditions of Stein and Crosse. If they were injured in some way, a quick and quiet escape was out of the question. Bolan would simply have to run the plays as planned and look for the best results.

      The Executioner noted a phone on the old man’s desk. He unsheathed a Ka-Bar combat knife on his web belt and with a rapid slash cut the line. He told the girl to wait five minutes and not to come out of the office before then, and closed the door behind him. He took out the cord on the lobby extension and the pay phone against a dirty, brown wall. Bolan started toward the steps and then froze in his tracks when the clack of decorative shells hanging from the front door sounded.

      He ducked into an alcove and watched with interest as four men entered the motel. From their mode of dress, Bolan could tell they weren’t here for a room. He instantly identified the leader of the pack by his cocky walk, short and stocky build, and ridiculously oversize mirrored sunglasses. The man shifted inside the linen sports coat he wore and Bolan saw a gun butt peak from beneath it. The other three men who accompanied him were bruisers who all carried themselves like men used to being armed carry themselves.

      Bolan considered taking them then and there but decided to hold off. While the possibility seemed remote, their presence may have had little or nothing to do with his mission. The Executioner didn’t believe in coincidence, and if these men were members of either the Cuban police or Havana Five, then things were going as planned. In either case, they hadn’t stopped by for a little chat—at least not packing the kind of hardware they were.

      For a minute or so they loitered in the lobby and waited, but when nobody showed to greet them a brief conversation between the trio and their leader led them to some decision, because they split into pairs with two headed to the elevator and the other pair by stairs. Bolan still couldn’t be sure who he was dealing with but he didn’t think these men were cops. Police officers, even in Cuba, would have bothered to investigate a desk with no clerk.

      Bolan waited a full minute, then headed to the stairs and quietly opened the door. He stuck his head through the doorway and looked up the stairwell. In the dim lighting, a shadow was visible on the wall. Smart. They had left a lookout on the stairs. Bolan would have to deal with that first before he could get down to business. The soldier pushed inside the doorway, closed the door behind him and ascended the stairs.

      He rounded the midfloor landing and crouched. The sentry had wedged his body between the half-open door so he could monitor the second-story hallway. That left him blind to anyone approaching from the stairs. Obviously, the guy hadn’t done this kind of thing before. The Executioner took the second flight of stairs as quiet as a mouse and grabbed the guy’s collar. He yanked down and back, which effectively took the sentry off balance. A hard blow behind the man’s right ear finished the job. Bolan wouldn’t take any lives at this point unless absolutely necessary. He didn’t think these men were policemen, but he wouldn’t risk killing a cop.

      Bolan dragged the body to the corner of the landing and stuffed it into a janitor’s closet. The door had no lock, rather just a flimsy bolt on the outside to hold it closed. It wouldn’t prove much of a barrier, but it might provide enough time for Bolan to complete his mission here. The Executioner went to the door, looked onto an empty hallway, then reared back when he heard the ding of an elevator bell.

      After checking his flank, Bolan opened the door a crack and tried to see as far down the hallway as he could. Two men, the pair he’d seen take the elevator downstairs, rounded the corner. The third man passed the door where Bolan stood guard, stopped a moment as if he were planning to get his partner, then seemed to change his mind when he spotted the other two. The threesome converged on a door near the end of the hallway. The leader of the group immediately pounded on the door and yelled in Spanish. His guns moved to either side as he pulled his pistol and kept it low and behind his right thigh.

      Bolan heard the door open. The leader smiled, made some quiet comment, then leveled his pistol at whoever answered and squeezed the trigger. That one act of cold-blooded murder told Bolan all he needed to know about these men.

      The Executioner un-leathered his Beretta 93-R as he burst into the hallway, snap-aimed the pistol at the leader while on the move and squeezed off a double tap. The subsonic cartridges emitted a report not much louder than a discreet cough. The first round drilled through the leader’s side and spun him to face Bolan’s direction; the second blew a hole in his forehead and knocked him off his feet.

      The remaining gunmen turned with surprise on their faces. They hadn’t expected to cover their flanks, assuming any trouble from that direction would have been handled by their scout. It was a fatal assumption for both. While the gunners had their pistols drawn they were not accustomed to the skilled resistance Bolan offered. The Executioner sighted and triggered a single shot that took one man through the throat. A bloody spray washed the wall to the man’s right. The second tried to zigzag for some type of cover but to no avail in such narrow confines and under such keen marksmanship. Bolan caught the guy with two rounds to the chest. The slugs slammed the man’s corpse against the wall with enough force to damage the plaster.

      Movement to his right caused Bolan to track on the front door and two men in rumpled slacks, filthy suit shirts and shoeless feet dashed from the room. Bolan knew them immediately by their dossier pictures.

      “Stein! Crosse! Let’s move!” Bolan called.

      He gestured for them to come along and the two men didn’t hesitate in rushing to follow him.

      “How the hell did you find us?” Crosse asked as he sidled up next to Bolan and struggled to keep up with the Executioner’s purposeful strides.

      Bolan didn’t reply, instead keeping focused on their next task, which was escape. He led them to the stairwell, but as he pushed through the door he heard the door below open and the slap of boots on the stairs. Bolan pushed back and closed the

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