Читать книгу Mission: Apocalypse - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

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 Culiacán.”

“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 Culiacán. 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 Culiacán. 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.”

Culiacán 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—Cabrón!” 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 cabrón—”

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 Culiacán 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 Culiacán. 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 Culiacán 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 Culiacán 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 Culiacán 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 Culiacán.

“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 norteño 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. Culiacán was a city of three rivers. The Humaya and the Tamazula met in the city to form the Culiacán 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 Culiacán, 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. “Sí! 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.”