Mission: Apocalypse

Mission: Apocalypse Don Pendleton Deep inside Mexican cartel country, a dirty bomb is making its way north across the U.S. border.The location and eventual destination remain uncertain, but Mack Bolan is closing in on the radioactive caravan with luck and some dubious associates as his only allies. Bolan's orders are to find and take out the immediate threat, but he soon discovers that his mission doesn't end there–it's just the beginning of a bigger, grimmer picture that involves an international New Age cult. Across the globe, a self-styled guru has enlisted a massive army of disaffected Soviet and South American veterans as his shock troops in a new and apocalyptic war–against the world. Bolan retrieved the motorcycle and kicked it to life “I thought…you do not…fight cop.” “I don’t. I clotheslined a cop. Hang on.” Bolan aimed the bike toward the on-ramp, nearly losing it as Ramzin sagged to one side and toppled to the pavement. The Executioner spun the bike to a stop and jumped off. The Russian’s mouth hung slack. Clear fluid leaked from the corners of his eyes. His pupils were blown. Major Pietor Ramzin was gone. Mack Bolan gazed down at one of the most dangerous men he had ever faced. The truth would be covered up. Bolan knew Ramzin would be crucified posthumously. But there was one thing that couldn’t be taken from the man, even in death. Bolan took Ramzin’s Hero of the Soviet Union medal and pinned it to the dead veteran’s chest. Mission: Apocalypse Mack Bolan Don Pendleton www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk) Special thanks and acknowledgment to Charles Rogers for his contribution to this work. The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshipped. He is to bring peace to the earth, to build up the waste places—to comfort the broken-hearted… —Olympia Brown 1835–1926 Gavi Arkhangelov is no messiah. Bring peace to earth? He seeks war. Build up waste places? He plans to level cities with nuclear bombs. Comfort the broken-hearted? The man intends to sow pain and sorrow. But the best-laid plans can be destroyed. And they will be. —Mack Bolan For my friend, Billy C. CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR EPILOGUE CHAPTER ONE State of Sinaloa, Mexico The Executioner’s fist crashed across the sentry’s jaw. Guard duty was dull duty the world over. The man had spent more time and attention lighting his cigarette than he had the darkness around him. The flare of the lighter had instantly killed his night vision. In the same instant Bolan was on him. Teeth and tobacco went flying. In the sentry’s defense he was deep in his homeland, deep in the desert, the roads were all watched and all military and police units in the area had been thoroughly penetrated and bribed to alert his organization to any movement. No one was expecting a single, hostile American to come floating down out of the sky six hundred miles south of the border into Mexico. Bolan hit the guard again. This time his open hand chopped into the side of the sentry’s neck like an ax. The Executioner raised his hand for a third blow but the man was already falling unconscious to the ground with a concussion and half of his carotid arteries and nerves crushed. Bolan let him fall and caught the man’s rifle before it could clatter to the pavement. The G3 assault weapon was Mexican Army issue and probably stolen. The man was most likely ex-Mexican Army issue, as well. Bolan knelt over the sentry and found that he was indeed wearing Mexican military dog tags beneath his windbreaker. Gasca, Victor, was a private. Private Gasca was out of uniform. Mexican military officers and enlisted men moonlighting to do work for the cartels was as old as the war on drugs. Gasca was also wearing a white card key around his neck. Bolan removed the key and ran it through the lock on the warehouse door. The light on the lock blinked green. Bolan pulled his night-vision goggles down over his eyes and slid inside into the darkness. The light-enhancing optics took the barely discernible glow of the stars shining through the skylights and magnified it thousands of times, turning the inky blackness of the warehouse interior into a harsh, grainy, gray-green world. Bolan subvocalized into the microphone taped to his throat. “I’m in.” Fourteen hundred miles away in Virginia Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman sat in Stony Man Farm’s Computer Room and gazed at satellite imaging of Bolan’s position in Sinaloa. “Copy that, Striker. Begin radiological survey.” “Copy that. Commencing survey.” Bolan pulled the Geiger counter out of his web gear and powered it up. The IDR-Monitor 4 was a simple Geiger-M?ller type that measured alpha, beta, gamma and x-radiation and was about the size of an old style walkie-talkie. The device’s main component was a tube filled with argon gas. Argon was inert, but it would briefly conduct electricity when a particle or photon of radiation passed through it. The tube amplified the current into a pulse. The pulse was what created the typical clicking, static sound Geiger counters made. The faster, uglier and more staticky the sound was, the more radiologically uglier the ambient environment was. This night, gamma radiation was the subatomic particle of choice. Gamma radiation was always around. It was constantly bouncing around the cosmos, but usually in amounts a human being would consider infinitesimal. However, gamma rays were the most dangerous form of radiation emitted during a nuclear explosion. Unlike solar radiation, gamma rays were not stopped at the skin level. They passed completely through the body like a freight train, damaging every cell in their path and creating breaks in the DNA strands. Victims of exposure suffered horribly before they died, and survivors would pass on their damaged DNA in the form of birth defects to their children. You didn’t need a nuclear explosion to get gamma radiation. It was emitted from spent nuclear reactor fuel at very lethal levels. Mixed with conventional explosives, nuclear material would go on killing long after the effects of the explosives had been dealt with. Gamma radiation was the “dirty” in dirty bombs. Bolan muted the audio signal on the IDR-4 and began running his sweep through the warehouse. He waved the counter slowly over and around each pallet and crate, keeping his eye on the tiny dial to see if the needle jumped. It was barely twitching, but it was twitching. “Bear, I have slightly elevated levels of gamma radiation.” “Give me a count,” Kurtzman replied. Bolan watched the needle tremble at the very lowest end of detection. It was far less than the exposure one would get from an X-ray imaging at the doctor’s office, but it was still abnormally high for a nonmedical or nonindustrial warehouse in the middle of Sinaloa. “I’ve got ten kV.” Bolan shook his head. “Maybe less.” Kurtzman echoed Bolan’s thoughts. “It’s residual. The material has moved.” “Continuing sweep.” Bolan slid from pallet to pallet and stack to stack. Ostensibly the warehouse was used in the transshipment of beans and soya out of the Mexican highlands to the south. Bolan knew that any dope-sniffing dog worth his salt would be doing backflips from the scent of the residual Mexican brown heroin and Colombian cocaine that had spent the night on its way to the United States border. Gun-sniffing dogs would have recognized the scent of Cosmoline, Russian military lubricants and high-explosive blocks. As far as Bolan knew, there were no uranium-sniffing dogs, and if there were they had very short life spans. But the needle of the electrical sniffer in his hand began to twitch like a nose as it scented the air. “Reading getting stronger.” “Maintain safety protocols, Striker,” Kurtzman warned. “Readings still far below danger levels.” Bolan knelt on the warehouse floor as the needle shook like a leaf in the wind. His eyes narrowed beneath his night-vision gear. The needle was still vibrating against the low-end peg. He traced his fingers on the outline in the floor where pallets had obviously rested for years. Bolan passed the IDR-4 over the scratched square, and the needle twitched up a hairbreadth. Something radioactive had indeed rested here. The fact that there was still a distinctive radiation signature told Bolan that the bad guys had either breached the original containment vessel or they had transferred the materials to a new container whose shielding was not up to spec. “Confirmed, material was in the warehouse, and has since been moved.” Kurtzman’s silence spoke volumes. Nuclear material had gotten within six hundred miles of the U.S. and was still presumably heading north. They both knew there was only one option left. “Bear, I’m heading up to the hacienda for some Q and A.” “Copy that, Striker. Will advise the Man.” Kurtzman was going to inform the president that the mission had progressed from reconnaissance to search and destroy. Bolan finished sweeping the warehouse, but the strongest reading continued to be the suspiciously empty space. He stepped back over the stricken sentry. The man was alive but wouldn’t be raising the alarm anytime soon. Bolan’s boots crunched on the gravel road as he moved up toward the house. In the distance the Tamazula River gleamed with reflected starlight. Oswaldo “Pinto” Salcido seemed an unlikely trafficker in nuclear materials. He had gotten his nickname for the continent-shaped wine stains that streaked his left cheek and temple and had a vicious reputation in an already vicious line of work. He was still lower echelon, a regional warlord who exploited his locals and took a taste of goods moving through his territory rather than a major player in the Mexican crime cartels. If he was moving nuclear material, then he had moved up to the big leagues. Bolan was about to give Pinto some big-league attention. The Executioner raised his night-vision goggles and unslung his SCAR rifle. The weapon had a 40 mm grenade launcher mounted and loaded beneath the barrel, but he reached over his shoulder into his pack and drew forth a GREMs barricade breaching rifle grenade and clicked it on his muzzle. Salcido’s place was standard twentieth-century Mexican crime lord. High pink adobe walls surrounded a sprawling hacienda. Bolan closed within twenty yards of the automatic iron gate, peered through his rifle’s optic and fired. The assault rifle bucked against his shoulder as the rifle grenade flew from the muzzle. The grenade slammed into the gate’s locking plate and ripped the entire wrought-iron fence right off its tracks and left it twisted and lying in the driveway. Bolan squinted as the hacienda’s security floodlights snapped on and threw the entire front of the house into shadowless glare. The front door flew open and three men with AKs charged down the steps. Bolan leveled his rifle but pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher. Pale yellow fire belched from the 40 mm muzzle, and a bee swarm of buckshot expanded and enveloped the charging men in an invisible cloud of lead ball bearings that passed through their bodies like a withering wind. The three men twisted and fell. Bolan raised his rifle and fired six quick bursts into the arc of floodlights, and the front and sides of the hacienda plunged back into darkness. He pulled his night-vision goggles back down, jacked a tear gas grenade into his launcher and slid a fresh magazine into his rifle. Within the hacienda men were shouting, women were screaming and dogs were barking. A man leaned out of an upstairs window and sprayed the grounds with submachine-gun fire, but he was firing blind into the darkness. He showed up perfectly in Bolan’s optics and the Executioner’s burst blasted him from the window and dropped him down to the patio below. Bolan sent his tear gas round spiraling through the vacated window and sent a second one through the front door into the house a few seconds later. He took a moment to don his gas mask and clip it to his night-vision gear. Bolan moved up to the hacienda. Ignoring the open front door, he stepped onto the patio, picked up a wrought-iron patio chair and hurled it through the French windows. Shattered shards of glass cascaded to the tiles. Fresh feminine screaming broke out, as well as several gunshots, but none were aimed at Bolan. He jacked another buckshot round into his grenade launcher. Glass crunched beneath his boots as the Executioner entered Casa de Salcido. The gas was spreading nicely from room to room. Bolan went to the kitchen and took the stairs into the basement. He raised his rifle and burned a magazine on full-auto in the fuse box. The rest of the Salcido household plunged into darkness. Bolan strode back upstairs. Everything was chaos. People ran throughout the house shouting, screaming, choking and cursing. He could see everyone and everything through his optics, but to the inhabitants of the house he was just one more dark shape in the gloom and gas. Men with guns, Bolan shot. Men without guns, Bolan gave a lick with the butt of his rifle and dropped them. He grasped women firmly by their shoulders, told them “Get out” in Spanish and shoved them toward the closest exit. No one Bolan had encountered so far matched Pinto’s description. The soldier finished sweeping the ground floor of the hacienda and began to suspect Se?or Salcido was upstairs. Bolan went to find him. Things were slightly more organized on the second floor. Flashlight beams were sweeping wildly about while someone—Bolan suspected Salcido—was bellowing orders at the top of his lungs. A man appeared at the head of the stairs waving a flashlight and a pistol. Bolan stitched him with a burst and he tumbled down the steps. The rest of the gunners upstairs finally found some focus, and salvos of gunfire erupted and tore across the top of the landing. Bolan drew two flash-bang grenades from his bandolier, pulled the pins and lobbed the bombs over the landing. He prudently closed his eyes beneath his goggles and stuck fingers in his ears. Twin incandescent flashes lit up the upstairs landing and twin booms rocked the house like thunder. Bolan came to the top of the stairs. Two men with rifles staggered like drunks in half-blind, half-deaf disorientation. Hundreds of winking, pyrotechnic aftereffects flitted about like fireflies. A third man was holding himself up with one hand on the wall and desperately shaking his head to clear it from the effects of the stun grenade. In the gray-green world of the night-vision goggles the wine stains on the man’s face looked black. Bolan put a burst into each of the riflemen and put them down. Salcido pushed himself away from the wall and tried to raise a pistol. Bolan closed in three strides and snapped the butt of his rifle on Salcido’s wrist. The man screamed as his wrist fractured and the pistol thudded to the carpet. Whipping the butt up, Bolan cracked Salcido across the cheek. As his adversary staggered back under the assault, the Executioner slung his rifle and buried his fist into the man’s guts. The drug lord doubled over and then screamed and stiffened like a board as Bolan dropped his fist across each kidney as if he were hammering nails. The big American seized him by the collar and belt, and marched him into the master bedroom. More French doors opened onto a balcony. Pinto howled as Bolan accelerated from a fast walk to a run and gave him the bum’s rush right off the balcony. Salcido screamed as he plummeted through the darkness. His screams were cut short as he hit the swimming pool with a splash. Bolan climbed over the balustrade, hung by his hands for a moment and then dropped down in the backyard below. He went to the pool and hauled Salcido out by the hair and hurled him onto the pool deck. Bolan unslung his rifle and aimed at Salcido’s face. He activated the tactical light mounted on the side of his rifle and strobed Salcido with 75,000 candlepower at sixty blinks per minute. Salcido moaned and tried to raise his hands in front of his face. Bolan kicked them away, killed the light and planted a knee on Salcido’s chest. “Pinto, where is it?” “Where’s…what?” Between the flash-stun, the beating, the impromptu skydive and swim and the strobing, Salcido was at an all-time moral low. “Where’s what? I got money, I got drugs…. Whatever you want.” “I want the material.” Salcido gasped. “What…material?” Bolan frowned beneath his mask. It was possible that Salcido had no idea just what had been stored in his warehouse. “You had a very important consignment in the warehouse. Now it’s gone.” Bolan leaned more weight into his knee. “Where is it now?” “Shit…I don’t know. I was just paid to sit on it until pickup.” “Who picked it up?” “I don’t know, some guys. I didn’t know them.” Bolan sighed inwardly. Unfortunately he was fairly certain Salcido was speaking the truth. “When did the plane leave the airstrip?” Salcido suddenly became reticent. Bolan dialed the light up to 150,000 candlepower and hammered Salcido with the strobe. The man groaned and twitched feebly. At this level some individuals were known to have seizures and the drug lord had already had a hard night. “They left by truck! They took the road north!” Bolan killed the light. “How many men?” “Three.” “Who were they?” “I told you! I don’t know!” “Describe them.” “One was Mexican. He did all the talking, and he didn’t talk much. The other two were white boys.” Bolan cocked his head. “Americans?” “I don’t know…I don’t think so.” “Why?” “I don’t know. They didn’t say anything, but they acted all cool and European and shit. They were all dressed down, but you could tell they were suits.” “How long ago did they leave?” “This morning.” Bolan nodded. He might have caught a break. It was 650 miles to the closest point of the border. That was a long haul through a lot of rural Mexico. “What kind of truck?” “I don’t know what kind of truck!” A man lurched onto the back patio coughing and hacking. He carried a revolver in one hand and machete in the other. Salcido screamed as Bolan put a burst into the interloper’s chest and hammered him back into the hacienda. Bolan waited a moment to make sure he stayed down and then returned his attention to Salcido. “What kind of truck?” he repeated. “I don’t know!” “Describe it.” “I don’t know! A flatbed! Like farmers use! The cab was blue!” “How big was the load?” Bolan persisted. “It was like six packing crates.” “How big?” “Like the size of coffins. I didn’t ask any questions. I got paid not to ask questions. My men loaded it up and they took off.” “How was it loaded?” “In a pyramid, three on the bottom, two in the middle and one on top. They’re tied down and have a tarp over them.” “Were they heavy?” Salcido considered this. “My boy Chivo says it felt like they were loaded with rocks.” “Any of your boys feeling sick?” Salcido seemed confused by the question. “Sick? No, no one is sick. Why?” Bolan ignored the question. “You say you don’t know who picked the load up or where they went?” “No.” “Who sent it?” Salcido got reticent again. Bolan strobed him. “Hey! Shit! Man! I—” “Talk to me and you live.” Bolan was implacable. “You don’t, I shoot you and ask someone else.” “I don’t know who sent it! I’m just part of the pipeline!” “Who was the part behind you?” Salcido trembled. Bolan gave him a bit more knee in the sternum. “King Solomon! He sent it up from Mexico City!” It was a name Bolan had heard of in Mexican crime. He heaved Salcido to his feet and handcuffed him. “Let’s go for a walk.” “A walk? Where?” Bolan gave him an encouraging shove. “Into the hills.” “Aw, shit, aw, shit…you promised. You promised!” Bolan marched Salcido whimpering, blubbering and begging for mercy into the Sinaloan night. By the time they had gone two miles the drug lord had fallen five times and thrown up twice. Once out of fear and the second time out of exhaustion. Bolan stopped at the drop point. “On your knees.” “Por favor, amigo! Please! Plea—” Bolan kicked Salcido’s legs out from under him and swiftly manacled his feet and hog-tied him. Bolan stripped out of his raid suit and pulled on jeans and a leather jacket, then put most of his weapons and gear into a large duffel. He clicked on the GPS transponder. A pair of Sinaloan CIA assets would come and pick up Salcido and the gear. They would get descriptions of the three men in the truck and get police sketches out and sit on the drug lord. Bolan heaved up the BMW Dakar motorcycle he had jumped with and kicked it into life. The nuclear materials were heading north. The Executioner had only one lead, and it was forcing him to turn south. Back to Mexico City. Back to where the whole thing had started. CHAPTER TWO Culiac?n Bolan plugged his laptop into his satellite link and typed in his codes. Lights blinked on the link and told him the line was secure. Moments later Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s genius in residence and lord of the Computer Room, blinked into life on an inset screen in real time. “What have you got for me?” “A name,” Bolan replied. “King Solomon.” “Guillermo ‘King Solomon’ Dominico?” It was a name Kurtzman was familiar with. He clicked keys on his side of North America and brought up DEA and FBI files. “Smuggling nuclear materials seems to be a bit out of his normal purview.” Bolan had never personally run up against Dominico, but he knew him by reputation. “I would have said the same thing about Pinto Salcido, but Geiger counters didn’t lie and when he and I had our little talk I don’t think he was, either.” “Well, as drug dealers go he’s a pretty interesting cat,” Kurtzman stated. Bolan scanned the DEA files and they agreed with what he’d heard. Guillermo Dominico had appeared on the smuggling scene literally out of nowhere with a couple of planes and respectable war chest of seed money to start his business. His father had been a crop duster in the State of Nayarit who went on to buy some land and become a fairly successful grain farmer. Dominico had taken the skills he’d learned from his father and earned a reputation as a daredevil pilot who could land a plane anywhere. From the very beginning he had liked to spread his money around in the string of little towns he operated out of. Rather than a trafficker of poison he had been regarded as a kind of Robin Hood figure who snuck under the FBI’s and the DEA’s noses and brought back wealth for the people. The corrido musicians had written dozens of songs about him and turned him into a folk hero. It wasn’t long before he had moved up into management. “King Solomon” Dominico had become famous for his biblical and, by drug-smuggling standards, merciful judgment and punishment of those who transgressed against him. Most drug dealers simply slaughtered anyone who got in their way, and threw in some torture and atrocity to add fun and fear to the mix. Dominico had an Old-Testament, eye-for-an-eye, yet live-and-let-live philosophy. Anyone who stole from him? He cut off their left hand. Second time? Their right. Third time? Their head. To date there was no record of a second or a third transgression. If you informed on him, he tore out your tongue with tongs. As for DEA undercover agents or informants, nothing pleased him more than kidnapping them, keeping them as guests for a week or two at one of his haciendas deep in the desert and then dropping them off on the northern side of the border naked and hallucinating from violent heroin withdrawal. Over the course of the last decade and a half he had carved himself a somewhat small, but tidy and quite profitable corner in Mexican organized crime. He was big on Mexican pride and insisted on selling his wares north of the border. Anyone who worked for him who he caught selling locally received his judgment. Even other drug dealers liked and respected him and on several occasions “King Solomon” had been called upon to mediate disputes between the cartels. Dominico was a walking anomaly, a drug kingpin who had a code and actually walked his walk as he talked his talk. Bolan looked at the DEA file photo that Kurtzman had brought up on the screen. Dominico bore a disturbing resemblance to a smiling, Mexican Sylvester Stallone with a beer gut. Kurtzman was right. Smuggling nuclear materials for terrorists was not the sort of thing Guillermo Dominico would normally be involved with. Drugs, guns and kidnapping were things to be inflicted upon the yanquis, his neighbors north of the Rio Grande. For Dominico, Mexico was holy ground. Bolan just couldn’t see him trafficking in radioactive poison even if it was heading north. The other very interesting thing was that unlike most crime lords who ended up in prison or dead, according to the FBI Dominico appeared to have gone into retirement several years ago, left the state of Sinaloa and moved to Mexico City. “I think maybe I need to go have words with King Solomon.” Kurtzman had been afraid of that. “Well, here’s something about the boy you might not know.” “Do tell.” “Many people believe that King Solomon the drug lord was once the masked wrestler Santo Solomon.” Bolan raised a bemused eyebrow. “Really.” Bolan knew just enough about the wonderful world of Lucha Libre, or Mexican professional wrestling, to know that the original masked wrestler named Santo ran a close second to Jesus as most popular person on Earth with the previous three generations of Mexican citizenry. Untold legions of luchadors had attached the name Santo to themselves to ride his rep. Kurtzman called up more files. “At first he called himself Silver Solomon, and his gimmick was to come into the ring tossing peso coins to the crowd as he made his entrance.” He pulled up a grainy screen capture from Mexican cable television. A man in silver tights and a silver mask stood atop the second rope of a wrestling ring. His fists were cocked on his hips and his chin lifted like Superman as he absorbed the adulation of the crowd. He was wearing a silver cape. A twenty, a five and a one peso coin were sewn in descending order on the forehead of his mask with the one set between the mask’s stylized eyebrows. He was strong-looking, with impossibly broad shoulders, but was built more like a gymnast than his freakishly muscled wrestling counterparts north of the border. Mexican luchadors engaged in a lot of high-flying maneuvers and needed a higher power-to-weight ratio. “So then he started dedicating matches to this church, or that charity or this orphan,” Kurtzman went on, “and people started calling him Santo Solomon.” “So what happened to him?” “The Santo Solomon gimmick just disappeared. Some people say the guy behind the mask took on a new persona, others say he got injured and had to quit. Being unmasked is a grave dishonor in the ring, and a lot of these guys retire without anyone knowing their true identities.” “If it’s true he’d have the seed money to buy his own planes and start his own business. Can you link them?” “I’m working on it.” “You say Dominico is currently in Mexico City?” “Nice little house in the hills.” Bolan nodded. The nuclear material was still on its way north. He didn’t have much time. “I’m on a plane.” Mexico City KING SOLOMON’S KINGDOM was humble by most drug-lord-estate standards. It wasn’t the usual Latin crime-king sprawling rancho or fortresslike hacienda. It was a modest Eichler-style house of mostly glass walls and open floor plan. The most opulent thing about it was the prime hillside real estate it rested upon. The altitude put it above the horrendous air pollution and afforded a sea-of-stars view of urban Mexico City below. The house itself didn’t have much in the way of security, but most of the homes up in the hills were part of gated enclaves each with their own security station and armed guards. The raven-black 2008 Cadillac STS-V Bolan drove told most onlookers that Bolan belonged in these hills, and he wasn’t going to bother with trying to bluff his way past the gate. Bolan parked at a turnoff located about a hundred feet below the cliff that King Solomon’s house perched upon. It wasn’t a particularly technical climb, but a hundred feet of rock was still a hundred feet of rock and Bolan was making his ascent at night. The soldier shrugged out of his sport jacket and took off his tie. He rolled up the sleeves of the black silk shirt he wore and strapped his silenced Beretta machine pistol to the thigh of his black climbing pants. Bolan put handcuffs and a few other odds and ends in a fanny pack and looped a coil of rope over his shoulder. He kicked out of his Italian loafers, laced into his rock shoes, powered up his night-vision goggles and started to climb. Even at midnight the rock still radiated heat from the summer day, but a warm, dry rock face was the climber’s friend. He had scouted the cliff in the morning, and he climbed more by feel than what his goggles revealed. Only one overhang provided much of an obstacle, and for a few moments Bolan hung in space seventy-five feet above the road. However, he had photographed the ledge and committed its surface to memory, so the crevices and knobs were where he expected them to be. Bolan was at the top a full five minutes under the time he had allotted himself. He looped his rope around a tree trunk and cast the coil down the cliffside in case he needed to make a fast rope extraction. Satellite surveillance from the Farm had informed Bolan that Dominico’s girlfriend had left at noon and not returned. The gardener had gone home around 4:00 p.m. and the maid-cook had left at 10:00 p.m. It was now 12:15 a.m., and it appeared that Guillermo Dominico was alone. Bolan scouted the outside of the house. It was literally perched on a cliff and the glass walls had been designed to take full advantage of the view. Dominico had just enough of a back porch to include a long, narrow pool lined with black lava rock with an attached hot tub. There was a barbecue area off to one side, but no walls or fence to interfere with the vistas of the An?huac plateau below. Bolan spent long moments watching. Through his goggles he didn’t see the ghostly beams of any laser motion sensors. It appeared Dominico felt fairly secure in his aerie and the gates and guards on the periphery that kept out the riffraff and unwanted visitors from his past. No one had planned on some American pulling a Spider-Man in the middle of the night. Most of the rooms were dark. The master suite glowed blue from the light of a television. Bolan stepped into the shadows of the eaves and peered into the bedroom. One look told Bolan that Guillermo Dominico and the luchador Santo Solomon were the same man. King Solomon had been working out. He hadn’t quite reclaimed the fighting physique of his luchador days, but the barn-door shoulders were no longer sagging and the paunch and jowls from his DEA surveillance photos were gone. The coin-embossed, silver wrestling mask mounted behind glass on the wall surrounded by wrestling photos and newspaper clippings were something of a giveaway, as well. Dominico sat on a folded blue yoga mat wearing a pair of sausage-casing tight biking shorts; he was sheened with sweat and twitching and grimacing as he tried to hold a very forced and uncomfortable-looking half-lotus pose in front of his seventy-two-inch HDTV. Bolan paused a moment. It wasn’t something you saw drug kingpins do every day, even supposedly retired ones. Up on the screen a man wearing nothing but a white loincloth sat in a full-lotus position and lectured in obviously dubbed Spanish. He looked like Yul Brynner, if the actor was a six-foot-six Special Forces operator moonlighting as a yoga instructor. Beneath his dais three beautiful blond women demonstrated poses at various levels of difficulty as he lectured. Bolan bided his time and silently picked the lock on the sliding-glass door. He had run up against some wrestlers gone bad before, and anyone who had the capacity to fake that kind of physical carnage day in and day out without using wires or computer-generated special effects could also inflict it for real outside the ring. Bolan grimaced at the tiny click the latch made as he lifted it with his pick. Dominico was oblivious. His attention was equally divided between his DVD guru and his own straining knee joints. Bolan watched as the women on the giant TV unfolded themselves effortlessly from their sitting positions and flicked out their legs into full-forward splits. Dominico’s groan was audible through the sliding glass as he made a very impressive attempt at following suit. Bolan slid back the door and it closed behind him as he strode into the room. Dominico’s head snapped around and he rose an inch out of his splits. “Hey!” Bolan slammed his hands down on Dominico’s shoulders. The former crime lord groaned as the soldier leaned his two hundred plus pounds into his attack and pushed Dominico a little deeper into the splits than he’d ever gone before. He could almost hear the groin muscles and tendons pulling like piano strings being tuned to the breaking point. Dominico’s shoulders suddenly heaved as he tried to push himself up. He was a powerful man, and it was a mighty attempt but Bolan had all the leverage. Dominico was pinned in place like a bug. The only direction for him to go was down. Bolan spoke quietly from his position of moral advantage. “Try that again and you’re going to sing soprano, Santo.” Dominico couldn’t rise and he sure as hell didn’t want to go any lower. He snarled, suspended in yogic purgatory. “Don’t call me Santo!” Bolan raised an intrigued eyebrow. For a man about to be snapped like a wishbone Dominico was remarkably defiant. Bolan leaned a little harder. “You’d prefer King Solomon?” “No!” Dominico’s triceps stood out like horseshoes as he bore the weight of both of them. “It’s just Memo now!” he gritted. “Memo” was the diminutive of Guillermo, like Billy for William. Bolan decided to give it to him. He didn’t have a partner to play good cop-bad cop with so he was going to have to play both roles; that and Guillermo Dominico was giving off just about the weirdest vibe of any crime lord Bolan had ever encountered. It was going to require more study than just a quick beat down for intel. “Okay, Memo, let’s talk.” “Hey, man…” Dominico groaned in counterpoint. “Do I know you?” “I want to know about the operation in Culiac?n.” “What are you? FBI? DEA?” Bolan shoved down a little harder. “Talk to me or make a wish.” Every muscle in Dominico’s body tensed with strain. “I haven’t been to Culiac?n in years!” “There’s a farm up in the hills. Near the Tamazula River. It has a hacienda and a warehouse and an airstrip. There was a time when you flew out of it. From what I know you used to own it.” “I got nothing going on in Sinaloa! I’m retired!” “Drug dealers don’t retire, Memo.” Bolan leaned hard. “They just change their M.O.” “Jesus!” Dominico shuddered with effort. “I’m retired! Ask anybody!” “That’s not what I hear, Memo.” “Heard from who!” Dominico probed. “Your old buddy, Oswaldo Salcido, for one,” Bolan replied. “Pinto!” A geyser of Spanish profanities erupted from Dominico’s mouth. “That prick? You took his word? I set him up in business! I gave him a piece of my territory when I retired as a gift! Now he fingers me? Pinche chingaso mother…” Dominico dropped back into profanity. Bolan shut it off by giving the crime lord an extra millimeter of unwanted flexibility. “You are going to talk to me.” “Listen…” Dominico’s elbows bent as his muscles began to give out and his crotch moved inexorably toward the floor. He hissed through clenched teeth. “You gotta let me up, man…before I never have children!” Bolan relented a couple of inches. “Come up slow.” Dominico didn’t rise. He suddenly dropped beneath Bolan’s grip and spun on his back like a break-dancer. His legs scythed upward and his ankles locked behind Bolan’s head. The soldier’s feet left the ground as he found himself in a scissors hold. The glass walls shook as Bolan hit the floor flat on his back and the air blasted out of his lungs. He clawed for the Beretta 93R strapped to his thigh, but Dominico grabbed his wrist in both hands. “Gonna snap you like a toothpick, motherfucker!” Dominico began pulling back to straighten Bolan’s arm and break his elbow. Bolan found himself wrestling with a professional luchador, and he had no illusions about who was going to win a match between them. Dominico’s legs felt like two pieces of oak as they vised down on Bolan’s carotids for the strangle. The soldier’s temples pounded as he felt the blood shut off to his brain. His only advantage was that wrestling, whether real or fake, was played by rules and most people in an emergency did what they had practiced, and a lot of wrestling holds had weaknesses for those willing to cheat. Bolan managed to turn his head two inches. Dominico howled and released the scissors hold and Bolan’s arm as the big American sank his teeth into his calf. Bolan shook his head against the head rush as he lurched to his feet. Dominico popped up and came in snarling and limping. “You dirty son of a bitch! I’m gonna—” Bolan faked a right-hand lead but Dominico lowered his head and came in, willing to take a punch so he could get his hands on Bolan again and resume trying to snap him like kindling. Bolan fired his right hand for real—except that rather than going for a fist to the jaw he corkscrewed his thumb into the hollow of Dominico’s throat. His adversary’s eyes flew wide, and his tongue popped out as his trachea compressed. Bolan slammed his fist into the ex-drug dealer’s solar plexus, and the guy’s diaphragm spasmed against his already deflated lungs. Dominico’s face drained of blood, and he sat down on his yoga mat gasping like a landed fish. Bolan stepped in and threw an uppercut as if he were bowling to pick up a spare. His knuckles looped into the point of Dominico’s chin like a wrecking ball and ironed him out flat on the floor. Bolan drew his Beretta 93-R machine pistol. The laser sight blazed into life as he squeezed, and it painted a ruby red dot between Dominico’s eyebrows. Dominico gazed up into the muzzle of the machine pistol dazedly and sucked for air. Bolan took a couple of long breaths himself and shook his head to clear it. “Memo? I’m done playing with you.” “You aren’t DEA,” Dominico gasped. “And FBI doesn’t work like this. You aren’t cartel, either. Who the fuck are you?” Bolan gazed down on Dominico. He had taken down more bad guys than most people had eaten hot meals. A lot of those bad guys had been drug traffickers. At this point most drug dealers would be screaming for mercy or screaming for their lawyer. For a former professional wrestler who’d just gotten his ass kicked and a drug dealer staring down the muzzle of a machine pistol, Dominico was remarkably calm and collected. Bolan raised an eyebrow at the Yul Brynner look-alike lecturing in dubbed Spanish on the screen. “Memo, what is that stuff?” “You gotta be kidding me, man.” Dominico genuinely looked shocked that Bolan didn’t know. “That’s Cielo Ahora.” Bolan watched the bald man gesture gracefully with hands the size of catcher’s mitts while his nubile assistants twisted like dreamy-eyed circus contortionists. “Heaven Now?” “Change your life, man,” Dominico confirmed. “Changed mine.” Bolan peered down at Dominico with sudden intuition. “This is why you retired from the life?” “Hey, man, everybody’s got to grow up sometime. I been a legend twice. But Santo Solomon had two cracked vertebrae in his neck, and the doctors told him if he wrestled again he’d end up in a wheelchair. No one needed to tell King Solomon that he was going to wind up dead or in prison. Not that I cared, until a couple of years ago. Gavi helped me get my head right.” “Gavi?” Dominico grunted up at the screen and the bald man with the piercing eyes. “Gavi.” “So you quit the life because you found God?” “Found Gavi.” Dominico grinned. “The rest I’m working on.” Bolan gave Dominico a long, calculating look. “Memo, you want to go for a ride?” Dominico’s face went flat. “I’ve seen that movie, man.” Bolan shrugged. The ruby dot of the laser never wavered from Dominico’s forehead. “I can kill you now.” Dominico weighed the steel in Bolan’s blue eyes. “A ride is good.” CHAPTER THREE Campo Militar No. 1 “Uhh…” Dominico looked unhappily at the gates of Mexico City’s military base. “You know me and the military don’t get along so good.” “Relax, you’re with me.” Bolan tossed Dominico the keys to his handcuffs. “And I won’t tell them who you are if you don’t.” Dominico removed his manacles and rubbed his wrists. “You know this is kidnapping.” Bolan nodded through the Caddy’s tinted glass at the Mexican military policemen with assault rifles guarding the gate. “Take it up with them.” Bolan rolled down the window and displayed an ID card and a pass. The guard nodded and waved them in. Dominico watched barracks and military buildings pass by. “Man, just who the fuck are you?” Bolan ignored the question. Campo Militar No. 1 was a sprawling establishment with many of the Mexican Army’s branches having headquarters. Bolan knew exactly where he was going. He had already been there once earlier in the week. He drove up to a complex of tents that had the universal medical Red Cross flag flying over them. “We get out here.” “A hospital? Why are we—” Bolan got out and went into the tent complex with Dominico muttering and reluctantly following on his heels. Two guards with subdued Special Forces flashes on the sleeves of their uniforms were smoking cigarettes in the foyer tent. Both nodded at Bolan in recognition. They’re hands moved vaguely toward the grips of their FX-05 Fire Serpent assault rifles as they eyed Dominico. “Who’s he?” Bolan smiled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” The Special Forces corporal’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Try me.” “You don’t recognize him?” Bolan shrugged. “That’s Santo Solomon.” The guard’s jaw dropped. “No fucking way!” Dominico was appalled. “Do it!” the guards begged in unison. “Do it!” Dominico shot Bolan a look, sighed, put his fists on his hips, flexed his pecs, flared his lats, turned his head and lifted his chin as he seemed to lean slightly into a wind only he was aware of. The profile was unmistakable. You could almost see the silver cape flowing behind him. “Santo!” the guards cried. “Santo Solomon!” Both men snatched up pens and paper from the desk and demanded autographs. Bolan and Dominico were both given neck badges and proceeded past the checkpoint while the guards stopped just short of squealing like schoolgirls and fainting in Dominico’s wake. “I can’t believe you told them who I was, man. You never reveal masked wrestlers,” Dominico muttered. “It isn’t cool.” “I had to tell them something. I could have told them you were King Solomon the notorious drug smuggler instead. You saw the patches on their uniforms? Those young gentlemen are Special Forces and trained specifically to kill people like your other alter ego.” “Man…” Dominico wasn’t mollified. “What am I doing here?” “There’s something I want you to see.” They passed through a canvas corridor and came into a large medical tent. “And some people I want you to meet.” A short, fat bald man in a white lab coat waddled forward quickly. He was followed by a short, lean man in Mexican military camouflage with the subdued three-star insignia of a colonel. The doctor stared at Dominico in awe. “It’s true!” Dominico sighed heavily. Bolan suspected the guards had gotten on their cell phones. Bolan made introductions. “Dr. Corso, Colonel Llosa, meet Memo Dominico.” The doctor giddily pumped Dominico’s hand. “You know, I grew up watching El Santo, the original.” “Who didn’t?” Dominico admitted diplomatically. “But you? Santo Solomon? When my boys were young? You were their hero. I took them to see you wrestle El Monstro Rojo when you won the title.” Corso managed to curb his hero worship slightly. “Forgive me, but may I ask why you are here?” Colonel Llosa stared at Dominico with a professional interest that had nothing to do with wrestling. “I also must admit I am intrigued.” “It’s somewhat complicated,” Bolan said. “Dr. Corso, may I show him your patients?” “Of course.” There were sixteen beds in the tent but only two were occupied, and monitors, drips and machines surrounded them. Dominico jarred to a halt as they got close. The two men inhabiting the beds hardly looked human. Neither was conscious and their breath was so shallow that only the mournful beeps of the vital signs monitor indicated they were alive. Dozens of tubes and wires were busy carrying out their most basic bodily functions for them while other machines monitored their impending death. They were as stick-thin as famine victims and open sores covered their bald, sunken skulls. “You know what’s killing these guys, Memo?” Bolan inquired. “I don’t know.” Dominico stared at the two dying men greenly. “AIDS?” Bolan read Dominico’s body language and saw no deception. “No, radiation poisoning.” “Radiation poisoning?” Again Dominico was clearly both confused and appalled. “How did they get radiation poisoning?” “They were exposed to radioactive material,” Llosa answered dryly. “Dr. Corso is the head of Nuclear Medicine at the American British Cowdray Hospital Cancer Center here in Mexico City. Doctor?” Corso tapped his chart. “Both men were exposed to lethal levels of radiation. Given the rapid onset of symptoms and the searing of the lungs I believe they breathed in contaminated dust, most likely from spent nuclear fuel rods that had been stored improperly. We will most likely never know. Both men were in an advanced state when they were dropped off in the parking lot at Mexico City General. Neither man was conscious at the time of admission and neither has regained consciousness since. They were initially misdiagnosed as victims of some sort of virus and put under quarantine. Luckily the head virologist had received federal nuclear, biological and chemical emergency training and recognized the symptoms of radiation poisoning. It then became a military matter. I was called in and the United States government contacted.” “Any luck IDing them?” Bolan asked. The colonel shook his head grimly. “As you know, neither man had any identification on their person. The federal police ran their prints and came up empty. Your FBI had no record of them, either. They lack any of the usual gang tattoos. If I had to bet? These men are campesinos from the countryside, day laborers who came to Mexico City looking for work. I would also wager neither man was told what he was handling and neither were any safety or decontamination protocols observed.” He shook his head sadly. “They were used and then thrown away.” “There isn’t any radioactive material in Mexico!” Dominico objected. “Not normally,” Bolan agreed. “In this case Mexico is a transshipment point.” The colonel gave Dominico a severe look. “And you know all about transshipment points, don’t you, Memo?” Dominico flinched. Bolan steered the conversation back to business. “I believe these men were exposed to the same radioactive material that was being stored at your warehouse outside of Culiac?n.” “I told you man! It isn’t my warehouse anymore!” Bolan gave Dominico a long, hard look. “Someone is using your routes and your contacts to smuggle nuclear materials through Mexico.” Dominico shook his head vehemently. “No one is using my routes, man!” “Yeah?” Bolan leaned in close. “Well, someone used the warehouse and the airstrip outside of Culiac?n. Your old stomping grounds. You said yourself you gave out your territory when you retired.” Dominico backed up a step. “No way, man! I said I gave up my piece of the action! I never gave up my routes, and I sure as hell never gave up my people or my contacts! I took care of my own!” “You’re routes and your people are being used, Memo, and they’re going to start dying if this stuff is still being stored improperly. We don’t know where the material came from. All we know is that it was in Mexico City and then it was in Culiac?n. It’s moving north, Memo, and at the end of the trail someone is going to build a bomb.” Dominico gaped. Bolan locked eyes with him. “I want your people, I want your old routes, I want your contacts and for that matter I want you. Everyone involved will go to ground when I start hunting, but they just might talk to King Solomon. You’re going to open some doors for me. With luck we might just stop something terrible from happening, and we might just save the lives of some people you care about along the way.” Bolan locked eyes with him. “You in or out?” Dominico broke eye contact and stared over at the blistered, emaciated dying men in the beds. He looked back at Bolan and met his burning gaze. “I want a gun.” Bolan shrugged. “What kind do you want?” He blinked. “Uhh…an Uzi?” “A bit old-fashioned these days.” “First gun I had, when I started flying routes in the eighties. Nothing wrong with Hebrew steel.” Bolan nodded at the wisdom of the statement. “Nothing at all.” Culiac?n New Airport BOLAN PULLED AN UZI out of his gear bag. They were in a private hangar and Dominico had flown the Piper-Aztec from Mexico City. They were back in Sinaloa. Bolan had done some shopping at the CIA Mexico City station before their flight. “Here you go.” “Damn, you weren’t kidding!” Dominico took the submachine and eyed the shortened barrel critically. “Why is it sawed off?” “It’s an ex-U.S. Secret Service weapon. They removed a couple of inches of barrel so it would fit into their standard-issue briefcases. They called it ‘The Rabbi’ model.” “Circumcised.” Dominico grinned and racked the action. The padded case Bolan handed him held the gun, an ex-Secret Service shoulder rig, six loaded magazines and a couple of boxes of spare ammo. Bolan pulled out a plain black windbreaker that had been cut to help conceal the rig. They hadn’t spoken much on the flight. Bolan had given the man time to think things through. He’d been intimidated at the army medical facility, but Bolan didn’t want Memo Dominico intimidated or just turned. He wanted him dedicated to the fight. “So what are you thinking?” Dominico scratched his chin. “I’m thinking we should go see a guy—Varjo. You said Salcido thought he was working for me. Any orders he’s taking these days would’ve probably have come through Varjo. I think maybe we should ask Varjo where he thinks his orders were coming from.” “Varjo’s an old buddy of yours?” “No way, man.” Dominico shook his head. “Varjo is a serious asshole, but when I was running things he always owed me a taste. When I left Sinaloa I heard he moved up. He’s one of the reasons I never gave anyone my contacts or my routes. He would have used them up, ripped them off and spent them like water, but he and Salcido were always thick. Both were always a little too dumb, and tried to make up for it by being too brutal. Salcido I could work with. He didn’t have any delusions of adequacy. Varjo on the other hand? He’s seen too many movies.” Bolan got the picture. “I figure we just drive right up and surprise him. You’re my bodyguard. If Varjo thinks he’s working for me, he should be a fucking gold mine of information. If he isn’t—” Dominico spread his hands as if casting their future to fate “—we’ll find out real quick.” It wasn’t a bad plan. The DEA presence in Sinaloa had been kind enough to have an unmarked Ford Bronco waiting for them on the tarmac, and the Farm had arranged for a full war load of equipment to be loaded in the back while Bolan had been in Mexico City. Bolan checked his weapons and put a Desert Eagle semiautomatic pistol in one shoulder holster and his machine pistol in the other. He pulled a leather jacket over his hardware and let Dominico drive. Bolan scanned DEA files on his laptop. Varjo Amilcar’s nickname was “El Martillo” or “The Hammer.” He had been a cruiserweight boxer of little distinction in the professional ranks but had taken what skills he had and traded them in as a freelance collection agent for various loan sharks in Sinaloa. His method was simple. His partner would hold a debtor in place while Amilcar worked them like a heavy bag. He had beaten several men to death and done a nickel standing on his head at the penal colony on Maria Madre Island. With his reputation made, he had used similar brutality and the connections he had made in prison to move into the drug trade. However Dominico’s estimation of Amilcar seemed accurate. In the drug war Amilcar just wasn’t officer material. Despite his elevated status he was still more of a muscle and go-to guy rather than a man who ran his own routes or had his own suppliers. Amilcar was strictly middle management. Dominico regarded him with professional contempt as well as the disdain most wrestlers had for boxers. Despite that both Bolan and Dominico were disturbed by the idea that Amilcar had somehow broken into Dominico’s old business circle. He couldn’t have done it without help. They drove north out of the city and paralleled the Humaya River. “I want to make a call,” Dominico said. Bolan took out his phone and put it on speaker. “Go ahead.” Dominico was surprised as he took the phone. He dialed some numbers and the phone rang for long moments before a wary female voice spoke. “?Hola?” “Najelli,” Dominico said. “It’s Memo. What’s up?” “What’s up?” The woman exploded. “I tell you what’s up! Everything is fucked, Memo! What do you think is up! And why are you talking English?” Dominico looked at Bolan and was at a loss. “I’m…in town.” This was met with a long silence. “Why?” Dominico blinked. “Why am I in town?” “No, why are you speaking in English and why am I on speaker—Cabr?n!” Najelli hung up violently. “Girlfriend?” Bolan inquired. “I wish.” Dominico sighed. “More like the big sister I never had. She might be able to give us the lay of the land and some backup.” Intel was good. Backup was intriguing. “Try again.” The phone rang until Dominico got the answering machine. He waited patiently for the beep. “Najelli, pick up.” The line picked up. “Memo, I—” The woman exploded again. “You motherfucker! I’m still on speaker!” “Listen, Najelli, you—” “Memo…” The woman sounded like she was about to start crying. “Tell me you haven’t sold me out. Tell me you’re not sitting next to some American DEA prick.” “Uhh…” Dominico was at a loss again. “He’s not DEA, and I’m pretty sure he’s no prick.” “Memo, give me the phone,” Bolan said. Dominico handed back the phone sheepishly. Bolan covered the receiver and whispered. “Last name?” “Busto.” Bolan raised the phone to his ear. “Miss Busto? My name is Cooper.” The invectives flew. “Yanqui federale chingaso cabr?n—” Bolan interrupted and threw a card on the table. “Miss Busto? I’m not a cop. You are not under surveillance. You are not under arrest and you are not a suspect. I’m here in Culiac?n to help Memo kick Varjo Amilcar’s ass.” That tidbit of information was met with a profound silence. A tense ten seconds passed. “Put Memo back on.” Bolan covered the receiver with his hand as he passed the phone back. “Don’t mess this up.” “Man…” Dominico took the phone. “Najelli, whatever is happening, it isn’t me. I gave no orders. I’m coming out of retirement to fix this, understand?” “Okay, so who’s the American?” she retorted. Dominico ad-libbed. “I didn’t know who I could trust. I hired a Special Forces mercenary. He’s all professional and shit. Real badass.” Bolan shrugged. Silence reigned for a long time before Busto spoke. “Memo? I’m telling you. Things are bad.” “I know. Let me pick you up. We’ll talk. If you want out, I got a plane.” “You got room for my mother? And my daughter?” Dominico looked to Bolan, who nodded. “Yeah. I got room. You’re family, Najelli.” “Then come and meet me at Davilo’s shrine.” “When?” “Now, chico.” The line clicked dead. “Who’s Davilo?” Bolan asked. “Davilo Fonseca, fellow pilot. He was Busto’s boyfriend. She learned a lot from him. Then the federales punched holes in his ride on the way back from the U.S.A. and he made a smoking hole in the ground. Man, I tell you, I tried to steal her from Davilo a thousand times, but she was in love. After he died, a lot of guys wanted her. Some were bad, including Varjo. I let everyone know they had to go through me. You know, I offered to marry her. Instead she asked me to teach her how to shoot. Then she up and left to Mexico City to became a bodyguard. There’s more call for women guards there than you think. You know, rich guys want someone who can stay with the women and children and girlfriends twenty-four-seven. Someone the hombres feel safe with operating in their harem. Then she got pregnant. Word is it was one of her clients. One of her married clients. He denied it and she got fired and moved back here to Culiac?n. She didn’t think Mexico City was a place to raise a kid. Like any place is anymore.” “It’s not where you raise a kid but how.” Dominico shot Bolan a look and then suddenly pointed at a dirt turnoff. “We go there.” The road wound for another ten minutes through the hills and they came to a tiny valley. Dominico sighed in memory. “They call it El Corona.” Bolan examined the ring of hills that formed “The Crown.” Weeds overgrew the floor of the vale, but it was clear that it had once been leveled into an airstrip. It was a picture-perfect, hidden landing zone for a daredevil narcotraficante willing to risk everything, but it was short. Very short. For a pilot with a damaged aircraft the Crown would turn a hairy descent into suicide. Dominico pulled up beside a cairn of stones covered with tarnished religious medals, faded ribbons and burned-out votive candles. It was the last resting place of Davilo Fonseca. Bolan could see unshed tears in Dominico’s eyes by the glare of the Bronco’s headlights. “I taught him everything he knew.” Dominico scraped the back of his hand across his face. “She won’t be long. Her mother and father were farmers. She took over the old place. It’s not far from here.” Bolan found a courtesy Thermos of DEA coffee and a foam box laden with street-vendor tamales wrapped in corn husks. He and Dominico leaned against the Bronco and ate and waited. Dominico was right. It wasn’t long before headlights showed up on the dirt road. Bolan drank coffee as a primer gray and rust red Mercury Grand Marquis pulled up in front of the Bronco. A woman got out from behind the wheel. She wore old cargo pants, a man’s cardigan sweater a few sizes too big for her and some ancient-looking cowboy boots. She was runway-model thin with brown hair worn in two braids. Her brown eyes were huge above a little ski-jump nose and bow lips. Najelli Busto looked like a lost waif from the streets of Rome rather than a Mexican gun moll—except for the stainless-steel Ruger pistol thrust into the front of her pants. She wore a scowl on her face and was smoking the stub of a cigarette. Bolan could tell by the sweet smell of the rice paper binder that it was an unfiltered Mexican Faros. She chain-lit another as she and Bolan sized each other up in the glow of the headlights. She spoke to Dominico without taking her eyes off Bolan. “You look good, Memo.” “You, too, baby!” Dominico grinned. Busto made a bemused noise. “Miss Busto, you said everything in Culiac?n is messed up. May I ask what you meant?” “Well, you’re a polite son of a bitch, I’ll give you that.” Busto looked warily to Dominico. He nodded. “You can talk to him. He’s cool.” “I am cool,” Bolan agreed. “Tell me what’s messed up, Miss Busto.” Some pent-up anger began to simmer to the surface. “You want to talk about messed up? First you got Pinto and Varjo acting like they own the place, and they don’t play nice. What’s worse is even guys who don’t normally sweat guys like Pinto and Varjo, men of reputation, are acting like they’re scared. That gets everybody scared. Some people disappeared and suddenly Varjo and Pinto can get away with just about anything. Then Pinto gets hit—” “That was me,” Bolan admitted. Busto’s big brown eyes blinked. “That was you?” “Yeah.” “You and Memo took out Pinto?” “No, just me.” Busto was incredulous. “Memo, who the hell is this guy?” Dominico sighed. “I stopped asking.” Busto struggled with it all. “So you kicked Pinto’s ass? And all of his men? By yourself?” Bolan nodded. “Yeah, and now I’m gonna do the same to Amilcar. You in?” Busto just stared. “Listen,” Bolan went on, “I’ve gotten to know Memo a little bit. I believe he’s on the up-and-up. I also believe he’s being set up for a big fall. When I spoke with Pinto, he didn’t know who the head of the operation was, but he thought Dominico was calling the shots from the Mexico City leg. I want to know if Varjo believes the same thing and if he knows anything more than Pinto did.” “What kind of fall?” Bolan weighed how much to tell the woman. “The kind where Memo wakes up in a subbasement in Kazakhstan.” “Jesus, you’re talking like the war on terror and shit.” “That’s right.” Bolan nodded. “The bad guys didn’t expect to get discovered, but they got sloppy with their packaging and we caught a break. But if they did get discovered, King Solomon would take the rap. No one believes in drug dealers who retire. Think about it, he drops a profitable business in drugs, leaves for the capital and goes dark for two years. On paper it sounds shady as hell. He’d be the perfect fall guy. Memo would be shipped off to a secret prison someplace, someplace dark and deep, and by the time the Ukrainian interrogators got done with him and figured out he really didn’t know anything, whatever ugliness the bad guys are planning would have already happened.” “So who are the bad guys?” Busto asked. Bolan shook his head. “I don’t know.” “What are they planning?” “I don’t know, but something involving a flatbed-load of radioactive material.” “Jesus…” “Najelli,” Dominico said very quietly, “some campesinos in Mexico City are already dying from just moving this stuff. I’ve seen what it’s going to do to people. I signed up with the hombre here. We’re gonna stop it. We got to.” Busto looked back and forth between the two men. “Jesus, Memo, you know I heard you joined some cult and gotten religion or something.” Dominico rolled his eyes. “It’s not a cult, it’s—” Bolan cut him off. “We’re going to go pay a visit to Varjo Amilcar. You in or not?” “Oh, I’m in.” Busto dropped her cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it beneath her heel. “But how are you going to play it?” Bolan had been considering his approach. “The element of surprise is always good.” “Surprise is good,” Dominico agreed. “And I think Varjo will be very surprised to hear from me, but I don’t think it will be a good kind of surprise. I’m thinking we don’t even make it through the gate.” Bolan smiled slyly at Busto. “How surprised would Varjo be if you called him and said you wanted to see him?” Busto snorted. “He’d be surprised. He’s always wanted a piece of me.” She chewed her lip and shook her head. “But I don’t know if he’d buy it. He knows I hate him. He’d suspect something.” Bolan weighed what he knew about the Hammer. “You said people have disappeared. People in Culiac?n are scared. Everything is messed up and now he’s the top dog. What if you called Varjo and told him you’re lonely, scared and out of money? That you’re scared for your mother and daughter.” Busto smiled bitterly. “Well, that would all be true, wouldn’t it?” Her smile grew predatory as she thought about it. “But he’d like that. He’d like that a lot. Varjo has a real sick cruel streak. He’d love me to come to him begging. He’d love to break me.” Dominico looked at Bolan with renewed respect. “Jesus, you’re all Machiavellian and shit.” “It’s what I do,” Bolan agreed. He looked to Busto. “How soon can you be ready for your big date?” VARJO AMILCAR was ready for his big date. He was ready for it tonight. Bolan had smelled the sadism behind his reassurances when Busto had started crying and saying she didn’t know what to do anymore. Busto could have had a job in Mexican soap operas. She was that good. They sat in her parents’ old farmhouse. The walls were made out of adobe bricks, and Busto said the place was at least a hundred years old. They’d put her mother and her daughter in the Bronco and sent them on to the next town where her mother had friends. Bolan and Dominico drank coffee and ate red beans while they watched Busto doll herself up for her date. She’d looked cute in her knock-around clothes in the glare of the headlights. Now she was a knockout. Skintight jeans sheathed her lower body. Bolan suspected she’d had some surgical enhancements, and her upper half was doing its utmost to explode out of the camisole she wore. She’d brushed out her braids and her brown hair fells in waves around her shoulders. She draped a man’s sport coat that had been cut to fit her frame over it and began judiciously applying makeup to emphasize her features. Now she really looked like she belonged in Mexican soap operas. Bolan watched as she checked the loads in her 9 mm Ruger and stuffed spare magazines into her pockets. “You any good with that?” Dominico stabbed a proud thumb into his chest. “I taught her everything she knows!” “You any good with that?” Bolan repeated. Dominico rolled his eyes. “Man…” Busto checked the loads in a snub-nosed .38 and tucked the little revolver into the top of her boot. “When I went to Mexico City the security service that hired me put me through a course to teach me right.” Dominico deflated. “Man…” Bolan turned on Dominico. “You said you always had an Uzi, ever since you started flying?” “Yeah.” Dominico thrust out his jaw defiantly. “That’s right.” “You ever fire it?” “Of course I fired it!” “In anger?” Bolan prodded. “Yeah! Yeah, I did as a matter of fact! I was in a firefight! With Colombians in Baja!” Bolan probed further. “Did you hit anything?” “I…” Dominico’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know, man. It was dark, and across an airstrip.” “I see.” A city map and satellite photos were spread out across the table. Bolan tapped the spot where Amilcar had a house on the Culiac?n River. “Najelli, you’re going to drive right up. Memo and I will be in the trunk. All eyes will be on you and I doubt they’ll search the car. They will probably search you for a wire. They’ll find your gun, but Varjo probably expects you to have one. Expect to have it taken from you. Ask for a drink, start crying again and then tell him you want to be alone with him. I want Varjo separated from the rest of the household, so try to get him into the bedroom as soon as possible.” Busto grinned. “That shouldn’t be hard.” “No.” Bolan gave her an appreciative glance. “No, it shouldn’t. Once you’re inside Memo and I will extract ourselves from the car and make our way to you. With luck we’ll achieve total surprise.” “And then?” “Then we have a quiet talk with the man.” DOMINICO LAUGHED in the darkness. The trunk of Busto’s Grand Marquis was pitch-black, but it was cavernous. Both Bolan and Dominico were able to recline on their sides on piles of blankets in relative claustrophobic comfort as the sedan bounced over the potholed streets of Culiac?n. “What?” Bolan inquired. “The song.” Bolan perked an ear. Busto had her stereo cranked up playing cassettes of old school narcocorrido music. The corrido was a form of Mexican norte?o folk music. The narcocorridos were folk songs about various drug smugglers and their exploits. They had become popular in the sixties when the American drug culture had exploded and enterprising Mexican criminals had exploited it. Today it was a music industry unto itself in Mexico. The music was fast and the Mexican slang so thick Bolan couldn’t make much of it. “What about it?” Dominico laughed again. “It’s about me. That song is ten years old. It never made it to CD, not that I know of. It’s called ‘De Las Alas Hasta el Rey.’” Bolan flexed his Spanish. “On the wings until the king.” “Very good, man.” Bolan could almost hear Dominico grinning in the dark. “The song is about a lowly narcotraficante flyboy who rose on angel wings to become the great King Solomon.” Bolan raised a bemused eyebrow. “Angel wings?” “I didn’t write it, man! Anyway. Najelli? She’s my friend. She’s playing it to give me courage.” Bolan hoped it was working. Dominico had been twitchy since Busto had slammed the lid shut. It wasn’t locked. Bolan was holding it shut with a piece of twine, but on every continent on Earth with a drug trade, being put in the trunk of a car was a death sentence, and this mission was starting to turn into a suicide run. “How you holding up?” “I’m okay.” Dominico was silent for a moment. “Can I ask you a question?” “Sure.” “Who are you? I mean…you’re not a cop.” “No,” Bolan agreed. “You’re not a soldier.” “I was,” Bolan admitted. “But not anymore.” “No.” Dominico spent long moments digesting this. “So…what the fuck, man?” Bolan gave him the short and sanitized version. “I was in a war. That was bad enough, but when I came back I found that some bad people had gotten into my world. They got close to me and mine. They got too close, they did damage and it got ugly.” “So, what did you do?” “I killed them, Memo. I killed them all.” “Jesus…So you’re the Terminator?” Bolan chose his words carefully. “You remember those campesinos dying of radiation poisoning in Mexico City?” “I’m having nightmares about it.” “I’m here to stop it if I can. If you’re not down with that, then knock on the trunk and Najelli can let you out. As far as I’m concerned you’ve done your bit, and we’re square.” “No way, man. I’m down, and I’m not going to let Najelli down. I have your back. I’ve been trying to get my head right. I’ve been trying to reject violence. But some shit, like nuclear radiation shit, has to be resisted.” “Righteous enough.” Bolan nodded. “But do me one favor.” “What’s that, amigo?” “That thing at the back of your Uzi?” “What thing at the back of my Uzi?” “The folding stock.” “What about it?” “Deploy it.” “Man?” Dominico made a dismissive noise. “I never use that thing.” Bolan sighed. “That’s what I figured.” Busto knocked three times on the roof. It was the signal that they were arriving. Bolan aimed his Beretta at the trunk lid as he felt the ancient car slow. The safety on Dominico’s Uzi clicked off in the darkness and the weapon clicked again as he slapped the folding stock into place. Dominico radiated renewed tension in the trunk’s pitch-black confines. “Shit,” he said. “Here we go.” Bolan spoke quietly. “Memo.” “Yeah?” “Relax, shut up and don’t shoot unless I do.” Dominico absorbed the sage advice. “Right.” The Mercury came to a halt and Bolan heard muffled talk as Busto spoke to the gate guard. She was expected and the car moved ahead once more within seconds. The Mercury turned left, then right and came to a stop again. Bolan’s mental map from the satellite photos told him they had parked by the northern side of the house. He heard two sets of shoes crunch up in the gravel. Busto got out, the door slammed shut and he heard her follow the two men back the way they had come. Bolan spent long moments listening. “Hey, man,” Dominico said. “We—” “Quiet.” Bolan let up a few ounces of slack of the twine around his little finger. The trunk lid cracked open an inch and light flooded into the trunk. Bolan waited and the light suddenly disappeared. The floodlights were slaved to a motion sensor. Bolan figured it was three minutes since the car had parked and Busto had walked away. Inch by inch Bolan let the trunk lid up. “Stay low by the side of the car. I think we’re inside the motion sensor’s guard. We hug wall and move to the back. Got it?” “Got it.” Bolan paid out twine until the trunk was open. The floodlights still stayed off. “Follow me.” The soldier unfolded out of the trunk and crouched by the side of the car. He drew his Desert Eagle to fill both hands with steel. Dominico followed him but the lights stayed off, no alarms sounded and no attack dogs came slavering out of the dark. Bolan took the lead as they moved toward the river. Amilcar had a nice spot. Culiac?n was a city of three rivers. The Humaya and the Tamazula met in the city to form the Culiac?n River that flowed all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Amilcar had a little pier with a pontoon boat for parties, a couple of river boats clearly dedicated to fishing and a sleek cigarette boat Bolan suspected was for high-speed exits to the sea. Bolan didn’t see any guards on duty. It was late, it was a school night and Amilcar was gearing up for a private night of romance and revenge. It looked like they might have caught a break. The backyard was a wide expanse of lawn with the obligatory fountain, gazebo and arena-sized barbecue pit. Bolan glanced up as light spilled out across the balcony of the master bedroom. Dominico frowned upward. “Varjo works fast.” “So should we.” Amilcar’s vast living room overlooked the backyard and the river, and the lights were still on. Bolan peered in and counted four men. They all wore white tracksuits and were failing to conceal the fact they were carrying pistols beneath their clothes. They were all drinking beer and watching a soccer game on a plasma-screen TV the size of a drive-in. Bolan nodded at Dominico. They walked past the glass door and none of the four men looked up. Bolan and his partner moved back into the shadows. Amilcar’s house was newly built, and rather than gutters he had installed some very chic, Japanese-style iron rain chains. The Executioner holstered his pistols and clambered hand over hand to the roof. Dominico took the chain with the facility of a spider. Bolan walked across the roof tiles one slow, carefully placed step at a time and then lowered himself to the master balcony. His comrade alit beside him a moment later, and they crouched behind a pair of potted palm trees. In the master suite Busto lay back on the king-size bed while Amilcar pulled off her cowboy boots. The drug enforcer paused as he felt the steel she was concealing in her right boot. He drew the little blue steel Smith & Wesson and tossed it onto a love seat in the corner. “You don’t need that anymore, baby.” Amilcar raised his arms and flexed his biceps. “El Martillo protects you now.” Busto let out a credible giggle and sat up. “Baby, I’m going to—” Amilcar’s hand cracked across her face like a gunshot and slapped her back down to the bed. “You’re going to do what I tell you, bitch.” He yanked her back up by the hair. “You tell me to fuck off? Humiliate me in front of my friends and go off to Mexico City like you’re hot shit and then come back here dragging someone else’s kid? And now that I’m the man in Culiac?n, you come begging for me to take care of you, your old whore of a mother and your snot-nosed kid? Oh, I’m going to take care of you, baby. I’m going to take care of you in ways your boyfriend Davilo was afraid to try.” Busto hissed in rage and threw a very credible straight right hand at Amilcar’s face, but Amilcar had been a professional boxer and he swatted it aside easily. His hand whipped across her face twice more, forehand and back. Only his fistful of hair kept her from collapsing. The Hammer had heavy hands. His smile was ugly as he dropped her back to the bed. “Go ahead, baby. You were the hot shit bodyguard in the big city. Fight me. Get up and fight me.” Amilcar cracked his knuckles and warmed to his task. “Man or woman, business or pleasure. I love it when they try and fight back.” Busto let out a whimper and Bolan didn’t think she was faking. Amilcar laughed. “What’s the matter, baby? King Solomon isn’t here to protect you anymore? Guess you aren’t so tough after all. On your knees.” Dominico tensed, but Bolan put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Wait for it,” he whispered. Busto reached out with shaking hands and began to unbuckle Amilcar’s belt. Bolan stood up as Amilcar’s pants went down around his ankles, then stepped into the bedroom as Amilcar’s underwear followed. The drug enforcer had a split second to gape as the man in black appeared as if by magic. The Hammer might have been a professional boxer, but Bolan had literally caught him with his pants down. Amilcar should have put up his fists and shouted for his men, but instinct trumped his training. He made a strangled noise of shock and consternation and snatched for his pants. Bolan’s right hand sent Amilcar’s front teeth down his throat. Then he stepped forward and threw his cupped hand across the man’s face like a tennis forehand shot and slapped him onto his back. Bolan’s Beretta was in his hand and the machine pistol’s laser sight tracked between Amilcar’s legs. “Let’s talk quietly,” Bolan suggested. Amilcar drooled blood and teeth while he twitched in pain, shame and shock. He desperately wanted to pull up his pants. He desperately wanted to do anything but the laser beam painting his manhood kept him pinned in place like an insect. His hands were brutal weapons, but now they twitched at his sides like injured birds afraid to rise. Bolan didn’t use laser sights to aim very often but one nice feature they had going for them was that they scared the hell out of people. “Where did the material go?” Bolan asked. “What material? I—Hey!” Bolan knelt and screwed the muzzle of the Beretta’s sound suppressor beneath the Hammer’s scrotum. Varjo Amilcar’s genitalia immediately tried to retreat into his body. Bolan lifted his head and looked around the room in mock concern. “Is there a draft in here?” Amilcar started to sit up and found himself staring down the .50-caliber muzzle of the immense Desert Eagle pistol that had appeared in Bolan’s other hand. The soldier twitched the muzzle toward the floor and Amilcar flopped back with a noise that presaged crying. Amilcar was a genuine tough guy, and he could have undoubtedly stood up to a great deal of physical torture in the same fashion that he had taken poundings in the ring; but Mexico was a macho culture and Bolan had usurped the Hammer’s machismo in the worst way possible. Bolan’s face was a mask of stone. “I’m not going to kill you, Hammer, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know they’re going to start calling you El Buey.” Buey was Spanish for bullock or castrated bull. Busto had risen from the bed. Her cheeks were turning purple and inflating like balloons. Her slitted eyes gleamed with palpable hatred out of the swelling. She reached into her left boot and pulled out a straight razor that Amilcar had not detected. “Let me do it.” “Watch the door,” Bolan ordered. Busto drew on her boots, scooped up her pistol and cracked the bedroom door to watch the hall. Bolan decided to go with some simpler warm-up questions. “Who gave you your orders?” “It was King Solomon!” Amilcar squeaked. “King Solomon sent you the material?” Amilcar grabbed for it like a lifeline. “S?! I mean, yes!” “He gave you orders in person?” “Yes!” “He gave you his routes?” “His routes! His contacts! Everything! He called the shots!” Bolan raised a questioning eyebrow. “Are you willing to testify against him?” “King Solomon is a whore! He gave orders like he really thinks he’s king and then sat back in Mexico City while we did all the work! You get him? I’ll testify against him!” Bolan let out a long breath. “You hear that, Memo? El Martillo is prepared to testify against you.” Guillermo Dominico stalked into the room from the balcony as if he were entering a wrestling ring. His head was lowered and his hands curled into claws by his sides. “Let him talk.” “Oh, shit…oh, shit…oh, shit…” Amilcar muttered it under his breath like it was his mantra. Bolan rose. “I’m not a torturer. It’s not what I do. But you’re lying to me, and Mexican citizens are dying as we speak. Soon United States citizens will be dying, and I think you know something about it. So it’s like this. I’m going to leave you here with Memo and Najelli. I’m going to step out into the hall and kill anyone who tries to come up while you testify. You know Memo well, Varjo. From back in the day. You know the judgment of Solomon, and you know what he does to those who lie and inform on him.” Amilcar knew full well that back in the day they’d have their tongues torn out. Bolan stared down at Amilcar’s shriveled sack. “I think you can guess what he’ll do to a man who messed with a woman under his protection.” Amilcar made a mewling noise. “Your choice, Varjo.” Bolan holstered his pistols. “Pull up your pants and talk to me, or testify as God made you in King Solomon’s court.” CHAPTER FOUR Varjo Amilcar spilled everything and Bolan recorded it. Names, routes, contacts—everything. Dominico grew increasingly agitated as Amilcar gave up the entire King Solomon machine from Sinaloa to Baja. It was Dominico’s former machine, but he had taken pains to protect the people he had left behind when he had turned over his new leaf. He thought he had buried his past. Someone had handed Amilcar King Solomon’s criminal gold mine, and Amilcar had gleefully dug up everything and everyone. Many of Dominico’s old accomplices had been forced back to work, sold out or killed. Dominico’s voice dropped to an ugly hiss. “How the fuck did you get all this!” Amilcar cringed. Dominico beseeched the ceiling. “How the fuck did I forget to bring tongs!” Bolan’s blue eyes burned down upon Amilcar and they were pitiless. “The man asked you a question. Make him ask again and I take that walk.” Amilcar babbled. “I…I…I…” Busto whispered urgently. “Someone’s coming!” Bolan raised his pistols. “How many?” “Two!” Bolan rose from Amilcar’s side. “Memo, watch him.” Amilcar suddenly shrieked. “Rudi! Tucho! Aqu?! Aqu?—!” Dominico drove the steel strut of the Uzi’s folding stock between Amilcar’s eyes. The drug dealer flopped to the floor like he’d been shot. Dominico smiled happily at Bolan. “You’re right! The stock! It works!” Busto slammed the door shut. “Here they come!” Bolan wasn’t in the mood for a blind exchange of fire through the door with Busto and an intelligence asset in the room. Fists pounded on the door and the men outside were shouting. “Varjo! Varjo!” Bolan charged the door. Busto’s eyes flew wide. “What are you—!” Busto shrieked and threw herself aside as Bolan hit the door like a fullback going up the middle. The door shattered off its hinges and Rudi and Tucho were smashed back with it. Bolan hurdled the fallen men and spun about, pistols in hand. Tucho had taken the brunt of the blow and was flat on his back. Rudi popped back up with a revolver in his hand. Bolan leveled the front sight of the Desert Eagle on Rudi’s chest and fired. The report of the big fifty in the confines of the hall sounded like a cannon. Rudi flapped his arms like a broken bird as he flew backward. Tucho struggled to sit up and draw his pistol. Busto had stepped into the hallway. She kicked Tucho in the chest to put him back down and shot him in the face. Amilcar roared behind them. “Prick! I’ll—” Bolan glanced back. The drug dealer had bounced up and the ex-boxer had taken a swing at Dominico. The ex-wrestler held Amilcar’s arm out straight with his elbow and wrist locked. His adversary howled as Dominico held him in a standing arm bar. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill everyone who ever worked for you! I’ll shank Najelli’s little—” Amilcar gasped as Dominico scissored his arms savagely and Amilcar’s elbow and wrist snapped. Dominico let go of his foe’s arm and the man sagged to his knees, mewling and cradling his shattered limb. Dominico gave him a thunderous slap to the back of the head that pitched him forward. “What did you say?” Bolan looked at his ally warningly. “Memo…” “He can still talk!” Dominico spit. Bolan sighed inwardly. This was what happened when you took amateurs for allies. With a broken arm there was no way to get Amilcar down from the balcony except to throw him. Renewed shouting was echoing up the stairs. This was a nice neighborhood and private security would be responding soon and the federales wouldn’t be far behind them. “You cripple him, you carry him. I still need him and we’re out of here!” “Don’t wait on me!” Dominico reached down and Amilcar screamed as he was yanked to his feet. Dominico chicken-winged Amilcar’s remaining arm into a come-along grip and pushed the muzzle of his Uzi into the back of his head. “?ndale!” Dominico marched him toward the shattered door. Bolan moved down the hallway. Someone had trained Busto right. She stayed back on Bolan’s six with her pistol held in both hands. Bolan moved to the banister and the twin detonations of a double-barrel shotgun printed a moonscape of craters across his shadow on the wall. Bolan leaned out over the landing and his pistols rolled in his hands. The killer took a .50-caliber slug and a 9 mm triburst simultaneously and the chest of his tracksuit exploded in red. Bolan leaned back out of the line of fire as an automatic rifle cracked and tore splinters from the top of the railing. Bolan rolled down three stairs and shoved his machine pistol out between two of the railing spindles. His triburst tore off the top of the rifleman’s head. The man behind him screamed as he was sprayed with brains and blood. Bolan rose and the big fifty ended the man’s hysterics with a single boom. The house was suddenly very quiet. Bolan spoke low. “That’s five. How many more do you have, Varjo?” The man blubbered something unintelligible and then squealed as Dominico cranked the chicken-wing. “Two! Gal and H!” Gal and H were conspicuously absent. No one downstairs was shooting or screaming. If they had run outside, the motion sensors would have come on and it was still dark outside. Bolan suddenly had a very unpleasant suspicion. “Who owns the houses on either side of you?” Amilcar’s voice went from terrified squeak to suicide-run ugly. “I do, motherfucker, and they’re full of my men. So is the house across the street.” “Shit,” Busto cursed. Despite having a broken arm and no pants Amilcar laughed. “Shit is right, and I own the cops around here. You better rethink your situation. You better think about your family. I’ll make you a deal. Memo? Kill the yanqui. You can take Najelli and disappear again.” The hallway got even quieter. Busto’s gun wasn’t quite pointed at Bolan, but she was looking back at Dominico. Amilcar’s voice was sick with twisted triumph. “I got at least five guys who want to take over the operation. We go outside? You can’t use me as a shield. They’ll cut us all down. So I tell you what. You call me King Amilcar and kill the yanqui? You can fuck off, Memo, and take the bitch with you. But you better decide real quick.” Bolan considered the shot. Dominico had cover behind Amilcar. He’d have to cross pistols and blast through Amilcar with the fifty and burn down Busto with the Beretta. Amilcar’s smile was sickening. “You don’t love me, Memo, but you know I never break my word. You know I’ll—” Dominico squeezed his Uzi’s trigger. Varjo Amilcar’s cranium came apart like a water balloon under the onslaught. Dominico dropped the half-decapitated drug dealer and reloaded with a shrug. “Fuck him. I never liked him anyway.” Busto sagged against the wall with visible relief. “So what now?” Bolan had really wanted to ask Amilcar a few more questions, but there was no point in crying over split skulls. “The river. We take his speedboat and go.” Busto nodded. “Nice.” Bolan advanced down the stairs. No bullets came. Gal and H had drawn back into either side of the house. They probably had the bottom of the stairs in a cross fire and were prudently waiting for reinforcements. Bolan took the second flight of stairs four at a time and threw himself into a diving roll across the foyer. Pistols barked in his wake and Gal and H shouted back and forth at each other. Bolan came up and saw muzzle-flash at shoulder height in the next room. Gal or H quickly jumped back around the corner. Bolan leveled the big .50 at the interior wall and it jumped three times in his hand as he let loose the thunder. Three silver-dollar-sized craters impacted and behind the wall a man screamed. A track-shoed foot suddenly slid out from cover as the man fell. “Gal!” The man on the other side of the foyer was screaming. “Gal!” Bolan used the foot as an index. He lowered his aim, tracked sideways and fired three more times where he thought Gal’s head and upper torso should be. The foot jumped with all three shots and flopped twitching to the tiles. “Gal!” Bolan fired his last shot the other way to keep H down and reloaded. “Najelli! Covering fire.” Busto swung just enough of her body around the landing to aim and began to fire, her Ruger discharging rounds methodically. Bolan marched across the foyer and down the short hall as the woman’s shots made little sonic booms in passing. She stopped as Bolan stepped into the line of fire. He took up the slack and touched off tribursts from the Beretta as he entered the vaultlike living room. The best cover that had line of sight on the stairs was the wet bar. Bolan shot out the mirror behind it and was rewarded as H screamed. H’s pistol snaked over the top of the bar and popped off several blind shots. The Executioner took a heartbeat to steady his aim and squeezed off a burst that sent the pistol and several fingers spinning away across the bar. H shrieked and what remained of his hand disappeared. Bolan fired off two more bursts at the top of the bar, and his Beretta racked open on a smoking empty chamber with a conspicuous clack! “I heard that!” H lurched up. He was big and bald and had a machete in his good hand. “You’re dead, motherfucker! You’re…” H’s rant tapered off as he stared down the loaded .50 in Bolan’s other hand. Bolan idly wondered what kind of people kept machetes behind the bar, but the obvious answer was that drug dealers did. A smart drug dealer would have stocked his bar with shotguns. “Yo, H.” Bolan motioned with the Beretta while he kept the Desert Eagle on the man. “Come on out. We need to talk.” H stumbled out from behind the bar. “Leave the machete,” Bolan advised. The machete clanged to the tiles. “You want to live?” Bolan asked. “Yes.” “Where are the keys to the speedboat?” “What?” “The speedboat, at the dock. Where are the keys?” Fists began pounding on the front door. Busto whispered, “We have company!” Bolan put the front sight between H’s eyes. “Keys.” “In the kitchen! By the door!” Bolan jerked his head. “Najelli! Go!” Busto ran for the kitchen. The fist blows turned into the thuds of men hurling themselves against the heavy oaken door. Dominico leaned against the foyer with his Uzi pointed at the front door. “It won’t hold!” Busto skidded back into the room waving a key attached to a little yellow float. “Got it!” “Memo! Najelli! Run for the docks.” Bolan nodded at H as they ran past. “You did good.” Bolan pistol-whipped him to his knees as the front door failed. He reloaded the Beretta and roared at the top of his lungs in Spanish, “Upstairs! They’re upstairs! They have the boss!” Bolan hightailed it as more than a dozen men flooded in through the foyer. It was time to break contact. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a white-phosphorous grenade. The cotter lever pinged away as he reached the kitchen and Bolan tossed the grenade onto the kitchen island as he went out the door. Dominico and Busto had tripped the motion sensors as they made their escape, and Bolan ran out into the lunar glare. He holstered the Desert Eagle and slid the Beretta’s folding stock from its shoulder sheath. The Willie Pete detonated behind him, and the kitchen window blew out in streams of white smoke and burning phosphorus element. Bolan extended the stock with a snap of his wrist and clicked it onto the butt of the machine pistol as he ran. At the dock two 500-horsepower diesels roared like dinosaurs arising from their ancient sleep. Busto waved at him frantically. Bolan had closed the door behind them but men were coming over the walls. Busto banged off return fire, but the range was long for the woman and her handgun. Bolan had transformed his machine pistol into a carbine. He dropped to one knee and flicked the selector switch to semiauto. Two men were straddling the western wall and trying to bring Mexican Army rifles to bear. Bolan shouldered the Beretta and put the glowing dot of the front sight on the closer man’s chest. He squeezed the trigger and the rifleman jerked, dropped his rifle and pulled a Humpty Dumpty as Bolan’s bullet opened his throat. The Executioner tracked his sights as the second man on the wall exchanged fire with Busto. The throttles on the cigarette boat suddenly cut back ominously. Bolan ignored the dock and aimed. He squeezed the Beretta’s trigger, and the man on the wall dropped back like a shooting gallery target. Busto was running down the dock shouting Dominico’s name. Bolan rose and ran. The men at the western wall had ceased their siege. The guys at the eastern one were just getting into gear. A bullet cracked past Bolan’s head as he ran. He cleared the back lawn, and boards thudded beneath his boots as he ran down the dock. Dominico was sprawled backward in the cigarette boat. Blood painted the white leather of the driver’s seat and fiberglass of the cockpit. Busto was bent over him. “Go! Go! Go!” Bolan boomed. Busto looked back over her shoulder desperately. “I don’t know how to drive a boat!” Bolan took three more running steps and jumped as bullets whined and whipped past him. The cigarette boat lurched and the fiberglass floor made an ugly crackling noise as Bolan hit. He hauled Dominico out of the driver’s seat and rammed the throttles forward. The cigarette boat shot ahead like an arrow and screamed down the river. “Get down!” Bolan dropped down and negotiated the next hundred yards of the river from snap memory. He had discouraged the men in the western house from attempting the wall. Now the cigarette boat took a broadside of lead in passing. Bullets walked across the prow, shot out the windscreen and tore into the stern. One of the diesels shrieked as something big enough to tear into the engine block gutted it. Bolan rose up as gunfire crackled, but the hull no longer shuddered with bullet strikes. He rose up just in time to violently swerve the boat away from the bank and aim it westward. The port diesel clanked and howled and died as Bolan throttled it back. The starboard engine still had five hundred horses, and Bolan kept the hammer down. Gunfire still crackled and sirens wailed along the river. Bolan could see the blue-and-red flashes of police lights strobing through the trees, but they were all heading east toward Amilcar’s house. Bolan burned westward for the sea. CHAPTER FIVE Altata, Sinaloa, Mexico Dominico had bled up a storm. A bullet had ripped through his left bicep. The local tissue destruction was minimal but it had zipped through close to the bone and had nicked his femoral artery. Bolan’s medical kit was minimal, but he had managed to clamp it and close it. Now he was closing the entry and exit wounds. Busto applied pressure above the wound as Bolan stitched beneath the light of the veranda’s bare 100-watt bulb. Dominico lay back in a hammock and drank tequila straight from the bottle with his good arm. They had checked into a camp that consisted of a cluster of adobes along the beach. Each had a reed-covered patio and was less than ten yards from the water. Altata was one of Sinaloa’s hidden gems. Most tourists beelined for Mazatl?n. Altata was a sleepy little fishing village in Ensenada de Pabellones. Only the most ardent tourists reached it and did so by motorcycle through the endless dunes. The camp had a number of advantages. One was that almost no one came here. Two was that if an army of drug muscle came driving down the dirt road, they would see them a long way off and they could head straight back out to sea, and three, one of the nice things about clay-brick adobes was that short of heavy machine-gun fire they were pretty much bulletproof. Busto nodded as Bolan worked. “You’re good.” Bolan wished he had a medical stapler but his knitting skills would have to do. “Thanks.” “I couldn’t do what you did inside his arm.” Bolan shrugged. “That’s okay. Bandanna.” Busto mopped Bolan’s brow with her bandanna. “But what you’re doing now?” “Yeah?” “I can do better.” Bolan accepted that. Dominico groaned as he dug his thumb higher up on the femoral artery and let Busto get to sewing. “How’s it hanging, tough guy?” “Pain I don’t mind. I’ve had plenty of that, but my fingers feel funny. Like my foot. It went tingly and numb when I hurt my back and had to quit wrestling.” Bolan had been afraid of that. If a bullet damaged the femoral artery, it generally damaged the femoral nerve, as well. The question was whether the nerve had been nicked or just traumatized. The fact was Dominico needed a doctor. “I’m thinking of sending you back to Mexico City.” “Fuck that, man. I’m just a quart low and need a nap.” Busto sat back from her suturing and wiped a sweating brown tequila bottle across her brow. Dominico flinched as she took the tequila, poured some over the entry and exit wounds and gave herself a chaser before winding a bandage around his arm. Busto sighed as she sat on the ice chest and reached for her cigarettes. Her right cheek was purple; her left one was turning black. She grabbed ice from the hotel bucket and held it against her face with a sigh. Dominico took another long swig from the bottle and closed his eyes. The whole team needed a nap. The problem was a nuclear time bomb was ticking. Dominico began to snore. “Najelli, I’m going to give him a couple hours’ rest. I need to contact my people.” Busto opened the chest and cracked herself a fresh beer. “I’ll stay by him and watch.” Bolan went in and plugged in his laptop and satellite link. He punched in his access codes and Aaron Kurtzman was online instantly. “You’ve been busy, Striker.” Bolan took a seat on the cabin’s single rope bed. “Yeah, well, you know.” “Culiac?n local and federal police have been lighting up all night.” “How bad is it?” “Well, officially there’s a manhunt going on.” Bolan had expected nothing less. “And unofficially?” “Everyone thinks it was a cartel assassination, and with Varjo Amilcar dead there’s a sudden power vacuum in Culiac?n. No one has any idea who did it but territory is territory. The major cartels moved northward into Baja and along the Texas border in the last decade, but Culiac?n is still considered the old alma mater of Mexican crime and being acknowledged as boss there has prestige. On top of that Amilcar wasn’t popular. No one is crying over him.” “What’s the situation on the coast like?” “The Mexican Navy and Coast Guard are watching for Varjo’s boat, but they figured whoever stole it went out to sea and are burning north. They’re putting up a cordon around Baja.” “No mention of Memo officially or otherwise?” “You caught a break on that one. Anyone who recognized him during your raid on Amilcar’s place is currently deceased. The police are looking for two suspects, a yanqui vaguely matching your description, a man described as little more than a Mexican national, and unfortunately Se?ora Najelli Busto is wanted by name for questioning.” Bolan had been afraid of that. Amilcar had undoubtedly bragged about his impending conquest and there had been survivors in the battle on the river. “She and her family are going to need asylum in the United States.” “We’re already putting in the paperwork, Striker.” “Thanks, Bear.” “What have you got on your end?” “Somehow Amilcar got a hold of all of Memo’s old routes and contacts. How is still a mystery. Apparently Dominico took pains to cover his tracks when he got out of the life. He says he doesn’t know how this could happen.” Kurtzman frowned on the video link. “You think Dominico is lying?” “If I was reading this in a report I’d say yes, but I’ve been hanging with him for three days now. He’s had his chances to turn on me or make a break for it, and unless he’s one hell of an actor he is genuinely mystified and appalled at what’s happened to his old machine. He sure as hell wasn’t faking his reaction to the men with radiation sickness at Camp One.” Kurtzman sighed unhappily. “We’ve heard from Dr. Corso. The surviving radiation victims have died.” Bolan shook his head. “I don’t suppose they got any information out of them?” “Sorry, Striker. They never woke up.” “What did the interrogation team get out of Pinto Salcido?” “Not much more than he already told you. Whoever is behind all this kept him pretty ignorant. We’re going to have to figure they have cutouts all the way up the chain. The good news is the team did work up some pretty decent police sketches from his descriptions of the men who took the material off his hands. I’m sending them now.” Bolan clicked on the jpeg files and three police sketches appeared on the screen. The first was Caucasian. His receding hair, beard and mustache had all been trimmed to a matching one-millimeter of stubble. His nose was broken and he had a lateral scar going through his left eyebrow. The stats read six feet and two hundred pounds and he smelled like muscle to Bolan. The second sketch was of a Mexican man sporting dark glasses, a short mullet, sideburns and a Vandyke beard. He was two inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than the first suspect. The third man was thin-faced, with a long nose and curly black hair pulled into a short ponytail. Bolan had to agree with Pinto Salcido’s initial impression. The two Caucasians definitely smelled Euro. “We get anything on the descriptions?” “No, but we’re distributing them to the border patrol and posting them at all U.S. checkpoints. Homeland Security is sending them to all the airports. We can expect full distribution within forty-eight hours.” It wasn’t enough. The material could switch hands anytime before the attempt was made to smuggle it into the United States, and it was anyone’s guess whether that would be by land, sea or air. The opposition would have to be complete idiots to have the same three men try to ride the material all the way, and Bolan had the feeling he wasn’t dealing with stupid men. At the moment the suspects were most likely bribing their way across Mexico, where they didn’t already have complicit help from the authorities. Kurtzman read Bolan’s mind. “Speaking of the authorities, we’ve been getting increasingly urgent messages from Colonel Llosa. He wants to know where you are and what information you’ve acquired.” Bolan had weighing that option. Colonel Cesar Llosa was a Mexican Special Forces commander and a twenty-year veteran of the war on drugs. The Mexican cartels had a five-million-dollar bounty on his head and numerous attempts to collect had been made. He had surrounded himself with a cadre of men personally loyal to him. Bolan trusted the colonel, and if Bolan needed helicopters and Mexican Military assistance Llosa would be the man to go through. The problem was that Mexico was riddled with corruption from top to bottom, including the police and the military. The minute Colonel Llosa and his strike teams left Camp One in force, everyone would know it, and any move Bolan made in coordination risked being leaked somewhere along the line. At the end of the day? The best chance Bolan had was to continue acting independently and try to make the intercept happen in Mexico. “Tell Colonel Llosa I’m operating in the field and I’ll send him a full report ASAP.” “Okay, but he won’t like it. What’s your next move?” “Memo took a bullet and lost some blood. As soon as he wakes up, we’re going to figure the most likely route the materials would have taken based on his old smuggling machine and what we know about Amilcar. I need extraction out of Altata, and I want to avoid any roadblocks or checkpoints. I need a plane with a legit flight plan in and out of here. Oh, and there isn’t landing strip anywhere nearby.” “Way ahead of you, Striker. Jack is on his way to your position in a floatplane as we speak. ETA is two and half to three hours. Sit tight. Get some rest. He should be there right around dawn.” “Thanks, Bear. Striker out.” Bolan stepped out onto the patio. Dominico was blissfully snoring away. Busto was smoking and staring out at the lagoon. She turned and gave him a smile out of her battered face. “We leaving?” “Not yet. I have a friend bringing a plane. We have an ETA of about two hours.” Bolan stretched and grabbed a bottle of water from the bucket. “I’ll watch if you want to go in and grab some shut-eye.” “You know, I would rather go stick my feet in the water.” Busto gave Bolan a sad, mutilated smile. “Culiac?n is only fifty-five meters above sea level, and only eighty kilometers from the sea, but most people there have never seen the Pacific. I love the water, but like most people in the city I almost never go.” Bolan dropped his water back in the bucket and grabbed two bottles of beer. “Whatever baby wants, baby gets.” “You say all the right things.” Bolan kicked off his boots, peeled off his socks, and he and Busto walked down to the water. The night breeze off the Pacific was the best thing that had happened to either of them in the last twenty-four hours. “Najelli is a beautiful name,” Bolan mused. “Is it Aztec?” “Very good. It is Aztec.” Busto beamed at Bolan. “You even pronounced it correctly.” “What does it mean?” “Love.” “Nice.” Bolan stepped into the surf and the waters of the Pacific lapped around his ankles. Busto followed him into the water. They walked a few dozen yards until they came upon a hump of rock sticking up out the water and sat down. They spent long moments silently sipping beer and looking up at the stars. Busto spoke very quietly. “I can’t go back home, can I?” “No, there are too many people who know you were at Amilcar’s when he was killed. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity in Culiac?n, but Varjo was a made man. Now he’s dead and the cartels know you were involved.” “So, what happens to me and my family?” “Witness protection. I’ll set you up.” Busto sighed. “You don’t want to leave Mexico, do you?” Busto thumped her hand over her heart in solidarity with her homeland. “I’m a mexicana. La raza—born and raised. I don’t want to drive a school bus or bus tables in…Minnesota.” “You say you like the water. Florida is nice for that.” “Oh, so the U.S. government is going to set me up in a beach house in Florida?” Busto lit a cigarette and blew smoke bitterly into the ocean breeze. “Is that what you’re promising?” “I said I’m setting you up. That’s what I’m promising.” Bolan shrugged. “Me? I like Hawaii, myself. Of course there aren’t a lot of Mexicans on Molokai. Your daughter will have to learn how to surf if she wants to fit in.” Busto’s hand slid into Bolan’s and gave it a squeeze. Mack Bolan and Najelli Busto sat with their feet in the Pacific drinking beer as they waited for the sun. CHAPTER SIX Bolan rose onto his elbows as he heard the drone of a twin-engine aircraft. Busto made a noise and lifted her head from his chest. Bolan shielded his eyes against the rising sun and saw the plane coming straight out of the orange ball. It banked to land in the lagoon and the dark silhouette dissolved into the sleek lines of a blue-and-white Piper Aztec Nomad floatplane. The water on the lagoon was as flat as glass and the plane threw up graceful, twin white-water rooster tails in its wake as the pontoons cut the surface. The plane turned toward them across the lagoon and cut its engines. A familiar face was grinning behind the water-spattered windscreen and blue-mirrored aviator sunglasses. The pontoons gently ground to a halt against the sand, and Jack Grimaldi popped out of the cockpit. He stepped out onto the pontoon and tossed a small anchor into the sand. He looked at Bolan, looked at Busto, and looked back at Bolan again. “Nice.” Bolan glanced at his watch. “You made good time.” “I had a good tailwind out of Baja, and if you’re going to fly an amphibian—” Jack Grimaldi, ace Stony Man pilot, grinned at his plane “—you can’t beat an Aztec Nomad.” Busto perked at the name. “An Aztec Nomad?” Bolan smiled and gave Busto’s shoulder a squeeze. “It’s what you are now.” Busto giggled. Grimaldi nodded. “It’s a plush ride.” The sound of the plane had brought Dominico wandering down the beach. His arm was in the sling Busto had rigged for him. He staggered a little bit with blood loss and hangover. He clutched the tequila bottle and took some hair of the dog to brace himself. He looked Grimaldi up and down noncommittally. “Who’s this guy?” “Fellow pilot,” Bolan said. “You’ll like him.” Grimaldi shoved out his hand. “Jack.” Dominico stuck out his hand and noticed there was a bottle of tequila in it. “Uhh…” Grimaldi took the bottle and took a swig without batting an eye. “Top of the morning, Memo.” He handed the bottle to Bolan. “This would go better with coffee.” Bolan agreed. They needed a strategy session and everyone needed food. Altata was a fishing pueblo, and the cantina was open late for the boats that had stayed out night-fishing for squid and stayed open to feed other fishermen who headed out before dawn. Mexican fishermen had long ago learned to reserve comment about strange boats and planes arriving or departing in the wee hours, but Bolan didn’t want Dominico, Grimaldi or his own descriptions floating around for anyone who came after them. “Najelli, do me a favor. Go to the cantina and get us some food. A lot of it.” He handed her a wad of pesos. “You got it.” Busto took the money, dusted the sand from her clothes and trotted off. Dominico gave Bolan a strange look. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” “Sure. Jack, I’ll be back in a second.” They walked down the beach a few yards. “What’s on your mind, Memo?” “I’m thinking of asking Najelli to marry me when this is over.” Bolan smiled. “Again?” Dominico scowled. “Yeah, again. So tell me one thing, man to man.” Bolan locked eyes with Dominico in deadly seriousness. “I didn’t sleep with her.” “It sure looked like you slept with her.” “I promised her I would set her and her family up in witness protection, then we had a beer, then we had a nap.” “A nap?” “Memo, I’m not going to lie to you. We held hands.” “You held hands?” “We held hands.” “That’s it?” “That’s it.” “Well, okay.” Dominico let out a long breath. “Promise me you won’t do it again.” “No.” Bolan shook his head. “No?” Dominico spluttered in shock. “What the f—” “At your wedding I’m going to lay a big old sloppy wet one on her.” Dominico actually blushed. “Man…” Busto came out of the cantina carrying a massive basket. They all returned to the cabin and she spread out paper plates and began heaping them with rice, yellow azufrado beans and fried sardines, and buried it all in the local salsa fresca. The two Thermoses of coffee were steaming hot and laced with cinnamon and nutmeg. The team spent long moments attacking the feast by the light of dawn through the window. Bolan waited for the first round to be finished and then spread out the police sketches as the team reloaded their plates. “You recognize these guys, Memo? Pinto said they took the material off his hands.” Dominico shook his head over the alleged Europeans. “Never seen baldy. Curly-top? Maybe, someplace, but I can’t place him.” He tapped the sketch of the bearded Hispanic man sporting the mullet. “But him? That’s Rubino Mankita.” “What’s his story?” Dominico shook his head. “Manny? He kills people.” “For which cartel?” Bolan asked. Dominico snorted. “The Libertad Onza cartel.” Grimaldi shook his head. “Never heard of them.” Bolan drank coffee and mulled that over. The Libertad Onza was the Mexican mint’s current one-ounce gold coin. “He’s freelance?” “That’s what they say, and they say he takes payment in gold. He does his work bloody and he likes to do it in public.” Busto rolled a sardine in a tortilla and bit it in two. “When I was doing security work in Mexico City? Mankita had a real bad reputation. They say when the assassination business was slow he had a sideline in kidnapping, only he wasn’t too good at it because half the time the kidnapping turned into a slaughter and even when he pulled it off the other half of the time he would kill the hostages when things didn’t go fast enough. Everyone was afraid of him.” “Real bad hombre,” Dominico agreed. “How come Pinto Salcido didn’t recognize him?” “Pinto was always local West Coast. He never operated in Mexico City. He’d undoubtedly heard of Manny but wouldn’t know him by sight.” That was probably the way the bad guys had wanted it, and it was a very interesting bit of intel. The Mexican cartels, the Russian Mafiya, the Chinese triads, all criminal organizations had their killers, but generally they were part of the extended family. Even if they were raping women and slaughtering children in their beds they were still considered soldiers rather than assassins. They did it for the profit or defense of their cartel, clan or syndicate. A man who killed for nothing more than money was a sociopath, and rightly feared and despised even by other criminals. Whoever the bad guys were they were transporting nuclear material across Mexico. Bolan found it very intriguing that they would use a psychopath, much less put him in such a position of trust. More than intriguing, it made no sense, but too many things on this one made no sense. Bolan suspected there was madness involved, but a deadly serious machine was in motion, and he knew the pieces had no meaning because he didn’t have enough of the puzzle. “Memo, best guess. Which way do you think they went?” “Well, they aren’t transporting fifty kilos of cocaine or marijuana. If what you say is true they’re moving over a ton of metal and the goons guarding it. I’d go to Baja. Sparse population and you can buy an entire pueblo’s silence easy. By the same token, you got lots of airstrips, lots of ports, and Tijuana and Mexicali if you need a big-city connection. If things start to get too hot? Shit, man, you could just dump the stuff into the Sea of Cortez and come back for it later. I did that once. I’m sure salvaging uranium would be harder, but what the hell, man? These guys have money, and uranium doesn’t rust, does it?” “It oxidizes, but that wouldn’t effect its radioactivity. It would just make it more dangerous to handle, and it would probably help spread the nuclear material out from the explosion.” Bolan frowned over a map of the Baja Peninsula. Dominico had called it the same way he would. “Still, over a ton of crated material plus the men guarding it. That pretty much precludes a light plane.” Dominico nodded. “And bigger transports draw bigger attention.” That would leave train, truck or boat. The only train line clipped the top eastern corner of the state and stopped dead in Mexicali without crossing the U.S. border. However it did come up all the way from Sinaloa with dozens of stops in between. The material could have been offloaded from the truck and loaded into a container car anytime within the past twenty-four hours. Bolan’s instincts spoke to him. A train was a lock. Once the material was on board there was no way to quickly offload it. Trains had regular stops and all of them could be filled with federales at a moment’s notice. Bolan felt sure the material was still in a truck heading north for the border or had headed for the coast and was on a boat rounding Baja. Guillermo Dominico’s alter ego King Solomon was the key. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/don-pendleton/mission-apocalypse/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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