The chopper’s engine clanked and screamed

Grimaldi bellowed as he fought the stick. “We’re going down!”

MacLeod burst apart like a water balloon, turning the cabin interior into a charnel house. Bolan could feel Smiley bleeding out in his arms. Chet was screaming hysterically. “You bastards! You bastards!”

The Devil had come for his due.

The helicopter soared over a sandy beach and spun nauseatingly. She skipped like a stone as one of her skids hit an outcropping. Grimaldi’s voice was uncommonly desperate. “Brace for impact!”

The helicopter hit.

Devil’s Mark

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

—Edmund Burke

1729–1797

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Some forms of evil are more obvious than others. My task—and that of my associates—is to take on all comers until the puppetmaster is exposed. Then I’ll mete out my brand of justice—hell on Earth.

—Mack Bolan

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Tijuana, Mexico

The three-car prisoner caravan wended its way through the potholed backstreets. Bolan rode shotgun in an unmarked, armored Bronco. It was 4:00 a.m., and the Tijuana back alleys still bustled in a sloggy way with drunken, bleary-eyed tourists either looking for a last, ugliest bit of action or staggering away from it. The dens of sin didn’t bother to promote themselves with neon lights or pamphlet-waving hawkers pimping strip shows as on the main strip. Displaying the wares was frivolous excess at this time of night and in this part of town. It was old school Tijuana—graffitied brown adobe walls, an occasional bare bulb and small, dark doorways. If you were here and had money, you had already picked your perversion. You just walked through a door and the wares found you.

Bolan glanced back at “the package.”

Prisoner Cuauhtemoc “Cuah” Nigris wasn’t a happy man. Nigris was the last of the “Baja Barbacoas,” a quartet of Mexican cartel contract killers who specialized in kidnapping their victims and slow-roasting them alive in a traditional Mexican open pit barbeque covered with maguey agave leaves. The fact that a man who had terrorized the Baja Peninsula from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, and was rumored to have eaten parts of his victims, had been reduced to the shivering cold sweats was cause for concern. Then again, all three of Cuah’s fellow accomplices had been caught, and despite the best efforts of the Mexican authorities, the three had been shot, poisoned and garroted while in custody, and adding insult to injury, they had all had their heads removed at some point before they went into the ground. Nigris was the last of his culinary killing quartet and, in desperation, had broken the cartel code of silence. He agreed to spill everything he knew about anything and everybody if they would only extradite him to the perceived safety of the United States.

Nigris flinched under Bolan’s scrutiny.

Babysitting was one of Bolan’s least favorite activities, particularly when the mark was a torturer and cannibal, but the powers that be in the Justice Department wanted Nigris, and they wanted him badly. He was a potential goldmine of information. Three of the four were dead. The Justice Department wanted some life insurance for Nigris and Hal Brognola had asked Mack Bolan to be the man’s personal policy.

Bolan sized up the policyholder.

Cuah Nigris was a light heavyweight in size and stature. Gang tattoos crawled over most exposed surfaces of his body, including his shaved head. His almond-shaped eyes revealed his Aztec heritage, and at the moment they were flared wide in fear as he sat shackled hand and foot in the back of the SUV.

Policía Federal Preventiva agent Majandro “Mole” LeCaesar sat next to him. The PFP agent was armed and armored and wearing black battle fatigues. His dark skin and brownish-red Afro betrayed a lot of African blood, and “Mole,” the national chocolate sauce of Mexico, was a nickname he wore with pride. Bolan had liked the man immediately. LeCaesar in return regarded the mysterious American with the gravest of suspicion. It was a sign of how desperate things were getting that the PFP would allow an agent to go dark on an American prisoner transfer. LeCaesar kept the muzzle of his MP-5 jammed into Nigris’s ribs and his eyes on the streets.

Bolan turned his attention to Agent Smiley.

It wasn’t the most onerous task in the world.

Drug Enforcement Administration agent Cambrianna “Bree” Smiley was short and dark with big brown eyes, big cheekbones, big lips and pretty much a big everything packed into a small frame. She was a woman who looked good in body armor. The words Mexican firecracker came to mind except for the fact that she was Irish and happened to tan well. Just about every national law enforcement and intelligence agency in the world kept a few lookers on the roster. Certain situations worked best with a beautiful woman on the team, but Smiley was more than window dressing. She had done a tour in Afghanistan in 2007 with the DEA’s Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams, or FAST, and Bree Smiley won a reputation as a problem solver.

And in fact there was a significant problem on the U.S. border with Mexico. A problem so bad the President of the United States had turned Mack Bolan onto it, as well. Bolan was used to being an enigma to federal agents and their not liking it. Smiley was taking it better than most. She wouldn’t admit it, but things had gotten spooky lately and she was secretly pleased to have the backup. Agent Smiley gave Bolan a lopsided grin without taking her eyes off the road. “You getting a good look, Blue Eyes?”

“Something is about to go down,” Bolan said.

“Impossible.” Smiley shook her head while constantly scanning the road ahead. “I planned this transfer. We sent out the decoy Cuah at 7:00 a.m. yesterday, under guard like he was the Mexican president himself. Our decoy is a ringer, and he reached the border and was delivered into custody without a hitch. No one knows about tonight’s little excursion except people I trust with my life, and that includes Mole. No one knows our route except me, and if we’re being tailed, then they’re better than you and me both. Cuah Nigris is coming to America and he’s going to sing like a bird for me.”

Nigris whimpered in the backseat of the Bronco as they swung out of the red-light district and headed north for the border. Bolan’s spine spoke to him and long ago he had learned to listen to it. “We’re gonna get hit.”

“No way.” Bree’s back went up. “I planned this op.”

“And you planned it well,” Bolan agreed. “But we’re gonna get hit.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“Because your skin is crawling just like mine.” Bolan turned to the backseat. “You happy, Mole?”

LeCaesar shook his head. “No, señor. I am not happy. I have a bad feeling.”

“What about you, Cuah?” Bolan asked.

Nigris moaned.

Bolan turned back to Smiley. “It’s unanimous.”

Smiley sighed. “And just who are you again?”

Bolan shrugged.

The woman’s shoulders sagged. “Tell me you’re Justice Department.”

“I’ve been associated with the Justice Department,” Bolan admitted.

“Associated?” Agent Smiley finally took her eyes off the road and quirked an eyebrow at Bolan. “Dude, you’re kind of spooky.”

Bolan shrugged. “I’ve been spooky—and scary, too.”

“Okay, Carnac. You got me. I got a real bad feeling right about now.” Smiley’s voice sank an octave in irritation. “So you tell me, Mr. Interdepartmental X-Files Liaison mystery man, you got any suggestions?”

Bolan unzipped the duffel between his feet and pulled out his current car gun. Agent Smiley’s eyes flew wide. “Jesus…”

Even LeCaesar was impressed. “¡Madre de Dios!”

The SCAR-H—Special Forces Combat Assault Rifle–Heavy—was about as brutal as black rifles got. The stock was folded, the barrel had been lopped to thirteen inches for close-quarters combat and a 40 mm grenade launcher was slaved beneath the forestock. The accessory rails along the top and sides were loaded with an optical sight, a laser pointer and a Taser unit in case Nigris suddenly became restless. The magazine was stoked with .30-caliber tungsten-steel-core armor-piercing bullets. Bolan had ten more mags loaded with the same and a spread of grenades specially picked for just this situation. Bolan jacked an antiarmor round into the launcher.

“Nice end-of-the-world weapon you got there, slick.”

Bolan checked the loads. “I was a Boy Scout.”

Smiley’s grin lit back up. “I was a Girl Scout!”

“I know.” Bolan nodded. “I read your file.”

“Okay, now you’re getting creepy again.”

Bolan scanned the streets of Tijuana. He had an intense dislike for fighting out of cars. They were bullet magnets. The window frames and your fellow passengers got in your way when you tried to shoot back, and if the bad guys had the balls it took only one or two enemy vehicles to run you off the road or pin you to a standstill and do you like Bonnie and Clyde. “You got a route B?”

“Route B, C and D,” Smiley confirmed. “I got Z if it comes to it.”

Bolan checked their lead vehicle. The caravan was in loose convoy. The lead unit was a block ahead and had four armed and armored DEA men inside. The tail unit was about a block behind and similarly loaded with a DEA Fast Reaction team. It would take a very good observer up in a helicopter or a string of spotters on rooftops to make the Nigris train as it wound its way through Tijuana for the border. “I want route X.”

“I’m all ears,” Smiley said.

“Tell A and B units to continue on primary route. If we’re blown, I say you and I go random. Screw silent running. We go O.J. mode and run. Have Control call in a chopper and vector us to the nearest garage with a rooftop. We fly our asses out of here, deliver Cuah to San Diego Branch, and we’re eating pancakes at the IHOP by dawn.”

“Like the way you think, Tall, Dark and Spooky.” Smiley cranked the wheel and thumbed her com unit. “Control, this is Vector 1. Suspect ambush. Breaking formation. Suggest Vector 2 and 3 continue primary route. I need a rooftop and helicopter extraction for package ASAP.”

The DEA controlling agent was across the border in a communications van watching the transfer by satellite. “Copy that, Vector 1. Working up a route. Break east for highway. Vector 2 and 3 continue—”

“Here they come!” Bolan watched two black SUVs and a pickup come boiling out of a side street in his sideview mirror. He clicked his com unit. “Vector 3! Right behind you!”

The three black vehicles formed a wedge filling both lanes of the road and forcing vehicles off the road. The pickup formed the tip of the spear and the truck bed was packed with gunmen. Bolan hit the button on the sunroof. “Mole,” Bolan said. The federale didn’t need to be told twice. Nigris squeaked as LeCaesar shoved him to the floor of the Bronco and stepped on his neck to keep him there. The agent lowered his window and leaned out into the night with his submachine gun in hand. Bolan stood up in the sunroof. He unfolded his rifle’s stock and shouldered the weapon. His eyes flared as a man in the back of the pickup leveled a green metal tube about a meter and a half long and sighted at Vector 3.

“Vector 3!” Bolan shouted into his com. “Rocket! Rocket! Rocket!”

Vector 3 went up on two wheels as the DEA driver cranked the wheel in desperate evasive action. LeCaesar’s weapon chattered into life and sparks walked across the pickup’s hood. Bolan flipped up his grenade launcher sight and took a second to aim. The weapon slammed against his shoulder as the grenade launcher belched 40 mm fire. The antiarmor round punched dead on into the pickup’s gleaming grillwork. The windows blasted out as the shaped-charge warhead turned a significant section of the V-8 engine into molten metal and superheated gas that filled the cab with fire. The men in the truck bed screamed as the truck lifted up off its chassis and came down without front wheels. The truck flipped and men were smeared onto the road like insects. The SUV drivers floored it to escape the burning, tumbling hulk.

LeCaesar roared into the night as if he was at a Club Tijuana home game. “Goal! Goal! Goooal!” He punctuated each outburst of pleasure with a burst from his weapon. “C’mon, cabrons!”

Bolan put his sights on the closest SUV and burned half his mag into the grille. Steam blasted out from beneath the hood. Bolan raised his aim and put the other half into the driver’s side windshield. The SUV instantly veered hard left and plowed into the brown adobe wall of a brothel. The wall cracked. The SUV crumpled like an accordion, spewing glass and bits of body panel like shrapnel.

Bolan slapped in a fresh mag. The remaining SUV suddenly found that Vector 3 had three windows open and outraged DEA Fast Reaction men pumping rounds into them from their assault rifles. LeCaesar grinned up at Bolan. “Cartel pussies, they—”

Both men lurched in the window frames as Agent Smiley hit the gas. She shouted back at them. “Down! Down! Down!”

Bolan snaked down out of the sunroof. He reached over the seat and hauled LeCaesar back inside. He had half a heartbeat to ram his feet against the floorboards and slam his free hand against the roof as the brights from another pickup roared out of a side street and lit up Vector 1 like stalag lights. “Brace for impact!”

The cartel pickup hit them broadside.

Smiley swore and took a brutal head bounce that cracked her window. Nigris screamed. LeCaesar and the prisoner tumbled around the backseat like two rag dolls thrown in on spin cycle. Bolan gritted his teeth as glass from his shattered window flew in his face. He lost his grip on the roof, and blood spurted from his hand as it sheared away the dome light. His stomach lurched as the Bronco went up on two wheels. Smiley gasped as it landed on its side and Bolan landed on top of her. Grenades and spare mags were everywhere. A frag spun like a top on the edge of the center armrest. Bolan grabbed it. He was risking a burn if gasoline was leaking, but he could hear boots pounding the pavement. As bullets began rattling against the overturned truck he pulled the pin with a bloody hand and tossed the grenade up and out of the shattered passenger window. “Frag out!”

Someone outside yelled ¡Granada! and the shouts turned to screams as the grenade spewed shrapnel in all directions. LeCaesar crawled out the sunroof dragging a mewling Nigris with him. Bolan grabbed his rifle and a bandolier and helped push the prisoner’s limp body out the sunroof. Smiley blinked and gasped. Bolan grabbed her and hauled her out of the Bronco. He reached back inside and pulled her carbine out of its rack.

“Smiley! You all right?” The agent stared at Bolan out of a mask of blood. Her left eyebrow was hanging off her face. Bolan held up his middle finger. “How many you see?”

“Screw you!” Smiley replied.

Bolan shoved her carbine into her arms. “You’re gonna be all right!”

LeCaesar slapped Nigris forehand and back, but the killer seemed catatonic. Bolan didn’t think it had much to do with the crash. LeCaesar made a terrible face as he tossed the prisoner across his shoulders like a sack of corn. The PFP agent was hurt. Bolan jacked a fresh grenade into his launcher. “Mole!”

“¡De nada!” Mole rose to his feet with a groan. “Go! Go! Go!”

Bolan looked up the street. A rocket attack had left Vector 2 a burning hulk. It didn’t look as if anyone had gotten out. Behind them Vector 3 had left the last enemy SUV riddled like Swiss cheese. Bolan slung one of Smiley’s arms over his shoulder and clicked his com unit. “Vector 3! We need you!”

“Copy that!”

“Control! This is Vector 1! Convoy under heavy attack! Vector 3 vehicle damaged! Package intact! Vector 2 is gone with all aboard! Repeat! Vector 2 is gone!”

“Copy that, Vector 1.” The voice of the DEA controller in California was grim. “Helicopter inbound. Sending Vector 3 extraction route now!”

Vector 3 came roaring up the block victoriously. A dark blue Ford F-150 came screaming down the road to meet them. Instincts honed in battle on every continent on earth roared up and down Bolan’s spine. “Vector 3! Abort! Take evasive action! Get out of here!”

“Negative Vector 1!” DEA agents sprouted out of the windows of Vector 3 and fire chattered from the muzzles of their carbines. They tore forward in an eight-cylinder, automatic-weapon jousting match. “We don’t leave people behind!”

The enemy wasn’t jousting. They were playing chicken, and Bolan’s guts told him they weren’t going to blink. Bolan dropped Smiley and brought up his rifle as the Ford flew by. Fire strobed from the muzzle and spent casings flew as he held the trigger down on full-auto, ripping the Ford’s rear tires. Vector 3 realized a heartbeat too late what the Ford’s intentions were. Vector 3 swerved at the last second, and the F-150 turned to meet them.

The vehicles collided head-on at a combined speed of over 100 mph.

The DEA men firing out of the windows of Vector 3 snapped like kindling from the impact. The assassin riding shotgun in the Ford flew through his windshield like a rocket of flesh and blood and plowed through Vector 3’s windshield, as well. The two 4x4s bounced apart like mountain goat rams that had crippled each other with one apocalyptic hit. Both vehicles were crumpled like tin cans. Bolan’s blood went cold as he reloaded and slapped his rifle’s bolt into battery. No one was getting out of either vehicle. Drug muscle wasn’t known for going kamikaze. Something was terribly wrong. “We gotta go. We gotta go now.”

“Jesus…” Smiley used her carbine to lever herself up.

LeCaesar groaned beneath Nigris’s deadweight.

“Give him to me.”

LeCaesar snarled. Nigris was still officially his prisoner until he was handed over to U.S. authorities. “Go!”

Bolan clicked his com. “Control, this is Vector 1. All convoy vehicles disabled. Vector 3 is gone. Package intact. We need extraction now or nev—”

Two Mercury Grand Marquis, one black, one brown, both with tinted windows, cruised down the street. They weren’t suicide sleds like the first wave of attack. They were cruising slow, prowling, the clean-up squad. “Bree, Mole, we got company.”

“Jesus!” Smiley flipped her carbine’s selector lever to full-auto. “How many of these guys are there?”

Too many, Bolan thought. He led his team down a side street as the two sedans slid around the burning hulk of Vector 2. They ducked down one narrow street and then another. The streets turned into alleys and barrios swiftly turned into unlighted, two-story adobes, huddled together with dirt for streets and lines of laundry stretched between them. The stars and a few strands of Christmas lights were the only light save occasional votive candles on stoops. Nigris squeaked as he tipped off LeCaesar’s back and landed in a fetid puddle. The agent’s weapon clattered as the man dropped to his hands and knees. Bolan kept an eye on the maze as Smiley dropped to a knee beside the Mexican agent. “You okay, amigo?”

LeCaesar mumbled in Spanish that it was nothing and he was fine. Then he threw up. Smiley wiped his chin and grimaced at the dark stain on her hand. “He got busted up in the crash. He’s bleeding inside. We need to call—”

“We don’t call anybody.”

“What do you mean—”

“I mean all bets are off.” Bolan turned off his com. “I don’t trust anybody but you and him.”

LeCaesar pushed himself to his knees and wiped blood from his chin. “The gringo is right. We trust no one.”

Bolan cocked his head at Smiley. “How come she’s not a gringa?”

LeCaesar rose with her help. “She’s mexicana honoraria.”

“How do I get to be an honorary Mexican?”

The agent flashed bloody teeth. “You have made progress tonight.”

“Great. Can I have Cuah’s keys?”

LeCaesar’s smile fell from his face. “That man is a killer and a cannibal. I am not so sure that is a good idea.”

“I don’t want to carry him and you can’t.” Bolan shrugged. “Just his legs. So he can haul his own freight.”

The agent looked at Smiley, who nodded. LeCaesar agreed. “Sí.” He pulled a dog-tag chain bearing handcuff keys from beneath his armor.

Bolan unlocked Nigris’s hobble and leaned in close. “Don’t even think about it.” Nigris whimpered. Bolan could smell the fear on him sweating through his clothes, and he didn’t like it at all.

“Mole, I thought this guy was supposed to be a genuine badass.”

“He is.” LeCaesar didn’t like it either. “Or at least he was.”

Bolan hauled Nigris to his feet. “We need to find a vehicle.”

LeCaesar grabbed Nigris by the scruff of the neck and jammed his weapon in his back. “The next main street is that way.”

Headlights suddenly flared to brights as if on cue. The black sedan filled the narrow alleyway the way they had come. Smiley and LeCaesar opened up. Sparks walked across the Mercury’s hood and bullets chipped glass. “They’re armored!” Smiley shouted. Brights hit them from the other end of the alley and they were pinned between the rapidly closing bumpers. Bolan was out of antiarmor rounds for his grenade launcher.

Nigris broke free of LeCaesar and ran screaming down the alley, waving his arms. “¡Maricon!” the agent snarled, but he wasn’t willing to shoot his suspect.

“Cuah!” Bolan roared.

The black sedan accelerated. Nigris froze like a deer and the vehicle ran him down. He flew ten feet and the Mercury followed, grinding him to paste beneath its wheels. Both sedans advanced, putting Bolan, Smiley and LeCaesar in the big squeeze. The two agents fired without effect. There was nowhere to go. Bolan pulled a high-explosive grenade. Most civilian vehicle armor jobs were armored in the windows and body panels. Only the highest end military and diplomatic vehicles’ undersides were mine-proofed.

Bolan pulled the pin and went bowling for bad guys.

He counted down one second of fuse time and underhanded the grenade down the alley. It bounced beneath the bumper of the oncoming brown Mercury. The front of the Marquis lifted higher than any low-rider dared dream as the undercarriage was annihilated. “C’mon!”

Bolan was already charging. The sedan behind them roared with acceleration. The Executioner burned half his clip into the stricken Marquis’s windshield from the hip-assault position. He leaped onto the hood and helped up his companions. “Go!” They slipped over the hood and down the trunk. Bolan turned toward the oncoming juggernaut and emptied his weapon into the windshield. His rifle clacked open on a smoking empty chamber as the sedan hurtled in. Bolan jumped.

The brown sedan beneath his boots disappeared backward and was replaced by a black one. Metal flew. The black Mercury slammed to a stop and Bolan landed on the hood. The occupants were barely discernable behind the tinted glass. He reloaded his rifle and began to fire into the driver’s side point-blank. The twenty steel-core rounds bit into the armored glass, the last five punching through.

Bolan pulled his last frag, armed it and shoved the bomb through the coffee-cup-diameter hole his rifle rounds had dug.

The interior of the Mercury flashed yellow, then sprayed red; it filled with scything shrapnel with nowhere to go. Bolan reloaded his rifle, jumped down and clambered across the shattered vehicle. Smiley and LeCaesar were street side, and he trotted up and joined them. No cars were immediately in sight. Bolan took out his phone and made a called the Farm.

Back in Virginia, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered on the first ring. “Striker! Where are you? We’ve been monitoring the DEA com link. It’s blowing up, and Tijuana looks like a war zone.”

“We were made the second we left the safe house. We’re down eight DEA men and we lost the package. We got our hats handed to us, Bear, and right now I got a federale in real bad shape. I need you to vector me to a hospital, and I don’t want to meet bad guys, federales or anybody else on the way.”

“That’s going to be easier said than done. I have the real-time feed from the satellite the DEA is using. The streets are swarming with cops and soldiers. All Mexican police and federal frequencies are blowing up.”

“I figured.” Bolan glanced at a manhole. “Pull up a schematic of the Tijuana sewer system. I’m extracting underground.”

“Interesting.” Bolan could hear keys clicking on the Kurtzman’s side. “Give me a minute.”

“Copy that.” Bolan broke cover and walked over to the manhole. It looked as if it hadn’t been moved in years. It was baked into the street, and he didn’t have time to wrestle with it. The Executioner pulled an offensive grenade from his bandolier, pulled the pin and dropped the bomb. “Fire in the hole!” He ran back to the car and slid across the hood to cover. The night flashed orange. People in their homes screamed and every dog in the neighborhood started barking. Bolan rose from cover followed by his battered team. The manhole cover was gone and the hole it had covered had been somewhat enlarged. “You got something for me, Bear?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure about sewer reception with your rig, so I’m just going to download the route to your phone. You’ll be on your own until you surface.”

“Copy that.” Smoke rolled out of the hole but even the acrid smell of burned high explosive couldn’t cover the septic stench that awaited them down in the darkness. Bolan watched as a dull green grid of lines began to scroll on the screen of his phone. His route suddenly highlighted in red. “Got it. Bree, Mole, c’mon.”

Smiley and LeCaesar limped to the hole and both of them wrinkled their noses in unison.

“Shit,” the DEA agent said.

“Mierda,” LeCaesar echoed.

Bolan considered the evening’s activities. Shit was right, and shit was all they had. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWO

Bree Smiley wasn’t smiling. She wouldn’t be quirking her eyebrow at anyone anytime soon, either. Blood leaked down her cheek as the Mexican intern sewed her left eyebrow back onto her face. Despite the blood and swelling, the DEA agent’s thoughts were clearly written on her face. She wasn’t happy. Bolan leaned in the door frame with his left hand bandaged. “You did good, Smiley.”

“We lost our prisoner and eight agents.”

“You survived.”

Smiley rolled an eye at the needle going in and out of her brow. “I got mutilated.”

“Scars are sexy.”

“Sicko.” Bree snorted and the effort made her wince. “How’s Mole?”

“He got tossed around pretty good in the crash. Busted ribs, his kidneys are bleeding. His left lung didn’t deflate, but it’s lacerated. Good news is the doctor doesn’t want to operate. They were most worried about infection from our septic stroll down below. They taped him up, put him on antibiotics and sedated him. Rest is what he needs most.”

Smiley looked around without moving her head. “Pretty swank digs for Tijuana. Your controller did good.”

Bolan smiled. Kurtzman would be amused at being referred to as Bolan’s “controller,” but Smiley was right. He had chosen wisely. Hospital Angeles had been built by the Medical Tourism Corporation specifically to cater to patients visiting from the United States and Canada. It was pretty much medical colonialism, but Bolan wasn’t complaining and he doubted LeCaesar would, either. It was a thoroughly modern facility, and the best treatment anyone who had been in a gunfight in Tijuana was likely to get.

“Where are the rest of my boys?” Smiley asked.

Bolan had made some calls. “They’re at the morgue along with what’s left of Cuah and the dead perps. Your men are being prepped for transport to the States. Cuah and company are staying here.”

“What about you?”

Bolan shrugged. “What about me?”

“Well, Cuah’s dead. What’s the status of your liaison-observer apparatus now?”

“Status is I’m going to stick around for a while. Hope you don’t mind.”

Smiley was visibly relieved. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that. You know, if you hadn’t been there Mole and I wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

“Yeah,” Bolan agreed.

“Humble, too.”

He shrugged.

The woman looked at Bolan sincerely through her bruises. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The intern dabbed away the remaining blood with a wipe and stepped back to admire his handiwork. “There.”

“What’s the prognosis?” Bolan asked.

“Twelve stitches.” He gave Agent Smiley a sympathetic look. “There will be a scar.”

“Scars are sexy.” Bree regarded Bolan dryly. “Or so I’m told.”

“Dr. Reyes suspects there may be concussion. It might be best if we kept you for observation until morning and scheduled you for an MRI. Do you—”

“Screw that.”

“Mmm.” The intern looked back and forth between Smiley and Bolan. “Somehow I suspected you would say that. Very well, I recommend you see your personal physician when you get back to the United States as soon as you can. If you experience nausea or dizziness before you return to the United States, come back here immediately.”

“Right, thanks.”

The intern took his clipboard, made some notes and left.

“Right.” Smiley stood up, made an unhappy noise and sat back down again. “Jesus…”

“Take it slow.”

“Shit.”

“Listen, just—”

“No.” Smiley looked past Bolan and rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t catch a break. “We got trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Inspector Federal Israel Raymondo Villaluz.”

“Is here.” Bolan gathered.

“Yup.”

“Is he a problem?”

“Well, he did sign over Cuah Nigris to me and Mole. Quite reluctantly, I might add.”

“And we lost Cuah.” Bolan sighed. “Has he spotted you?”

“Not yet.”

Bolan ushered Smiley to the opposite row of beds and pulled the privacy curtain. He peered out the crack between the sheets of fabric. Inspector Villaluz was as tall as Bolan but lankier. He wore gray slacks and a gray suit coat. His dress shirt was starched blinding white and cinched at the throat with a turquoise and silver bola rather than a tie. He carried his Resistol straw cowboy hat in his hand. Pancho Villa himself would have admired the man’s mustache. The five-fingered comb-over crawling across his balding was comical. Bolan made him pushing fifty and definitely old school federale. “Give me the low-down on Villaluz, quick.”

“He’s about as good as Tijuana federales get. I’m not saying he’s clean. Word is he hasn’t paid for a beer or a meal in Tijuana in twenty years, but word is also he isn’t in anyone’s pocket. He’s a ‘peace and quiet or I crack heads’ kind of cop. That’s his problem. He hasn’t kissed his superiors’ asses, and he hasn’t bent over for the cartels. He’ll never rise higher than inspector.”

Bolan watched Villaluz squint around the observation-recovery ward. He was obviously looking for them. There was no tough-guy swagger or bluster about him. He smiled and spoke to a nurse who was clueless as to where Bolan and Smiley had gone. Bolan made Villaluz for a man who was polite until it was time to not be polite, and then relaxed and enjoyed the violence. “You got anything else?”

“He’s also a gunfighter. Real Dirty Harry type. They call him in when things get rough.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Smiley spread her hands. “His nickname on the street is Dos Armas.”

Bolan smiled. “Two Guns?”

“Yup.”

“I think I’d like him.”

“Yeah, well, he isn’t going to like you. After losing three of the Barbacoa Four in custody? The federales put Villaluz and the team he got to pick himself in charge of babysitting Cuah.”

The shit storm was definitely on the horizon. “And then his superiors forced him to hand Cuah over to us.”

“You got it. Still want to meet him?” Smiley asked.

“Definitely.”

“You know I knew you were going to say that.”

Bolan shrugged. He pulled back the privacy curtain and made a show of solicitously examining Agent Smiley’s wound. Within seconds heavy cowboy boots drummed the linoleum toward them and stopped. The soldier turned. Anger passed across Villaluz’s face, but he was looking at Smiley’s wound. Bolan noted that the Mexican agent didn’t like seeing women hurt. Up close he noted the broken nose and scar tissue around the eyebrows that bespoke a former boxer. Villaluz spoke the easy, smoothly accented English of a man who had worked the U.S.-Mexican border all his life.

“Agent Smiley, allow me to express condolences on behalf of myself and the Agencia Federal de Investigación for the loss of your men.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

The man seemed sincere. He turned sincerely cold as he gave Bolan a hard look. “I have not met your companion. He is with your DEA?”

Smiley threw one out blind. “He’s associated with the Justice Department.”

“Ah.” Villaluz looked Bolan up and down again. “May I ask in what capacity?”

“I was called in to facilitate the transfer of Cuauhtemoc Nigris into U.S. custody,” Bolan said.

A lot of rejoinders clearly occurred to Inspector Villaluz, but he kept it simple. “And?”

Bolan didn’t bat an eye. “I failed.”

It wasn’t the obfuscation Villaluz had expected. “I see.”

“Three of the Barbacoa Four died in Mexican custody,” Bolan continued. “The fourth died in mine. You and I need to talk.”

“Yes, I believe I would like that very much. Agent Smiley, I gather you want to stay close to Agente LeCaesar?”

“At least until some backup arrives. I owe him, and he made enemies tonight.”

“Well, I will tell you, the food for the yanqui visitors in the cafeteria here is bad and the coffee is worse. The staff cafeteria is much better. I know many of the doctors and staff here. I will see about getting us something decent to eat. It is Sunday morning, I suspect they will have menudo.”

They followed the inspector to the elevator and went up four floors. Villaluz spoke a few words to a nurse and took over a medical conference room covered with Aztec murals. Within moments steaming bowls of tripe soup, baskets of tortillas and urns of coffee appeared. Smiley tucked in like a she-hyena with manners. Bolan took her hunger as a good sign. They shared a few moments of quiet save for table noises. Out of pride Villaluz wouldn’t bring even a despised guest to someplace he wouldn’t eat in himself.

Villaluz regarded Bolan with hospitable suspicion. “You like menudo, señor?”

“You have to look for it in the United States, and look just as hard to find a good bowl.”

“Ah.” Villaluz had no problem believing one couldn’t get decent menudo in the United States. “You prefer the broth red or green?”

Villaluz was playing chess. Bolan swiped a tortilla through his soup and wolfed it down. “Clear.”

“Ah.” The inspector nodded at the wisdom of the statement. “Simple is best.”

“Inspector, I’m very concerned that the cartel knew our route.”

“I am very concerned about that, as well.” Villaluz let some reproach creep into his voice. “However, I was not consulted on Señor Nigris’s extradition.”

“I concede the point, and it’s regrettable,” Bolan said. “However, three of the Barbacoa Four died in Mexican federal custody. We only came in after Señor Nigris demanded extradition to the U.S. in exchange for his testimony.”

“Yes.” Villaluz eyed Bolan archly. “You acceded to the request of a known cannibal.”

“Actually it was your Federal Investigation Agency that acceded to his request.”

Villaluz’s face soured. “I concede that point, and I assure you I find it regrettable as well.”

“Inspector, I believe you and I are on the same side.”

“No, actually you are both from the northern side.”

Bolan sighed inwardly as he sought a way to salvage the situation. “You come with a very high reputation, Inspector Villaluz.”

“Thank you.” The inspector accepted the compliment, but it didn’t seem to engender any sense of obligation on his part. “However, I am afraid I do not even know your name.”

Bolan nodded toward Smiley and shook his head. “Neither does she.”

Smiley shrugged helplessly. “It’s true.”

The inspector was momentarily caught off guard.

“But you can call me Cooper,” Bolan said.

“Very well. Let me be direct. I believe you are some sort of yanqui paramilitary, Señor Cooper. A specialist, brought in to help bring in Cuah Nigris alive. But by your own admission you have failed. Your mission is over, and I think it would be best if you filed your after-action report in the United States, or at the CIA station in Mexico City if you must remain within our borders. But I believe you will find that you have worn out your welcome in Tijuana. I think you must be a brave man, and skilled, but my superiors are not pleased with this evening’s activity, and to be honest, neither am I.”

“I can see how you might feel that way, Inspector. So let me be equally frank. An international DEA counternarcotics operation got compromised in the worst way possible. Our informant is dead, and so are eight veteran agents. As far as I’m concerned, my mission has just begun.”

Villaluz’s color began to rise. “Señor Cooper, you—”

Bolan threw his changeup. “However, as I said, you come with a very high reputation, and I realize we took over your operation, over your objections, and we dropped the ball. Fact is you walk heavy on the streets of Tijuana. I’m a yanqui of unknown origin, and you must suspect I have access to assets and resources you don’t, and vice versa. I suggest we pool them.”

Villaluz leaned back in his chair, remeasuring Bolan. “An intriguing offer, but I am not sure my superiors would approve.”

“Then don’t tell them.”

Villaluz blinked.

Bolan pulled out a business card with nothing but a number on it. “They don’t have to know. But if you call that number, you’ll have access to all the resources I can provide toward the case of Cuah, whether I’m removed from the situation or not.”

Villaluz took the card and stared at it warily. “My own…secret Uncle Sam?”

“Something like that.” Bolan nodded. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” Villaluz tucked the card away. “You may ask.”

“Is my leaving town a suggestion or an order?”

The inspector considered. “It’s a suggestion, for now, but do not expect much in the way of cooperation with the state or local authorities here in Tijuana.”

“Fair enough.”

“Let me say—” Villaluz frowned as his cell rang. “Forgive me.”

Bolan watched the inspector’s face as he took the call. He said very little, and Bolan could tell by Villaluz’s body language it wasn’t good news.

“You need some privacy?”

“No, thank you.” The inspector thanked his caller and clicked his phone shut. “As you know, any good policeman has his own intelligence network.”

“Of course.”

“I, of course, have put my machine into motion listening for any aspect of the Cuah Nigris case.”

Smiley pushed her plate away and stifled a belch with the back of her fist. “Cuah’s dead.”

“Yes, that is true, and now a woman I happen to know in the Tijuana’s fire department dispatch has just informed me a fire has been reported at the city morgue. Does this not strike you as an interesting coincidence, Agent Smiley?”

Smiley pushed away from the table. “Let’s go.”

“No.” Bolan rose and checked the loads in his Beretta. “We’ll never get there in time to do any good.”

Villaluz stood and broke open a heavy, snub-nosed Colt .38. “Your associate is right.”

Bree drew her weapon. “So why are we drawing down, then?”

Bolan pushed his weapon’s selector to 3-round burst mode. “If the bad guys just took care of loose ends in the morgue, then our main concern is keeping Mole alive.”

Villaluz donned his cowboy hat and tipped it at Smiley. “And you, señorita.”

“Oh, well, thanks.” Smiley checked her pistol. “I should have thought of that.”

“It’s the brain damage.” Bolan said.

“Hey!”

“Stay behind us. Stick close.” Bolan nodded at Villaluz. “Inspector?”

“Sí, the observation ward is on the first floor.” Bolan and Villaluz fell into formation as they left the medical conference room. Doctors and nurses scattered to get out of the way of the two large, armed and grim-faced men as they strode down the hall. Smiley had to run to keep pace. “Hey! Wait up!”

A braver than average nurse stepped toward them as they entered neonatology. “Sirs, this area is—”

Villaluz held up his badge. Bolan held up his gun. “Staff elevator, where?”

The nurse gawked and pointed to the door down the corridor. Smiley caught her breath as they reached the elevators and Bolan punched the button. “How likely do you figure?” she asked.

The inspector scowled. “Agent Smiley, there have been two gunfights in Mexican hospitals this year. After what has happened this night nothing would surprise me.” The elevator pinged and they stepped inside the car. Bolan glanced at the Colt Marshall in Villaluz’s hand. “Heard they call you Two Gun on the street.”

The inspector lifted his coat to reveal an identical revolver in a cross-draw holster. “It is faster to draw a second gun than to reload the first. It is perhaps the most important thing my father ever taught me.”

Bolan nodded. Villaluz Senior sounded like a man to be reckoned with.

Villaluz smirked at the machine pistol in Bolan’s hand. “Yanquis and their big guns…”

The elevator door opened to the sound of screaming. Doctors and nurses were running in different directions down the halls. A worst-case scenario came through the wide double doors that led into the observation ward. Six Hispanic males walked in three by three. All six wore trench coats, which were open, revealing body armor. All four men carried submachine guns. For just a second before the doors swung shut, Bolan saw the dead bodies littering the floor, testifying to the fact that civilian casualties weren’t a problem for the enemy. A crowd of doctors and nurses stampeded down the corridor like sheep before a pack of wolves.

“Everybody down!” Bolan roared and fired a 3-round burst into the ceiling.

“¡Todos abajo!” Villaluz thundered.

Medical professionals hugged walls, hugged the floor or threw themselves over counters or through open doors. A few still ran willy-nilly in blind and deaf panic. Bolan brought his Beretta 93-R on line in both hands. “They’re wearing armor!”

“Sí!” Villaluz shouted. He held his .38 one-handed in front of himself like an old-style target shooter and shouldered a scurrying intern to the floor. Smiley dropped to a knee between Bolan and the inspector.

The killers shouted and swore in defiance. Everyone’s weapon ripped into life at once. There was nowhere to run and no cover to be had.

Observation, Records and Receiving turned into the OK Corral as Team Bolan went for the head shots.

Bolan’s first triburst collapsed a killer’s face. Another gunner screamed as Villaluz’s pistol erupted and shot his ear off. The screaming stopped as the inspector’s second shot slammed through the man’s septum and blasted apart his brainpan. Both dead men had the decency to collapse into their compatriots behind them and spoil their aim. Long bursts ripped into the ceiling lights, and half the corridor went dark. Smiley’s auto-pistol cut loose as fast as she could pull the trigger. She caught mostly shoulder, but it was enough for Bolan and Villaluz’s cross fire to crush the third killer’s skull beyond recognition. Bolan’s next triburst tore out a killer’s trachea, and two huddling nurses screamed as they were struck by the arterial spray. Villaluz clicked on empty and slapped leather for his second gun. Smiley’s Glock cracked on like clockwork and another gunner fell. The inspector raised iron, and the last hard-man staggered beneath a full broadside from Bolan and company.

The battle was over in a matter of heartbeats.

Smiley rose and ejected her spent mag. “Jesus, that was—Jesus!”

Fresh screams ripped through surgery as the double doors flew open beneath the boots of two more killers. Bolan’s burst scattered the skull of one, but then the Beretta slammed open on empty. Villaluz punched a shot into one armored shoulder and clicked on empty. Both men simultaneously shoved Smiley to the floor and dropped to a knee. The action made both men’s pant legs ride up and expose the ankle holsters they wore. Bolan’s snub-nosed Centennial revolver rose up in his hand. Villaluz leveled a tiny, antique Colt .32. Bolan felt the wind whip of bullets passing close to his head as he and the inspector’s revolvers spit fire.

The killer collapsed to the floor with his face cratered into a bloody moonscape.

Smiley pushed herself up snarling. “God…damn it!”

Bolan and Villaluz rose and swiftly reloaded. The Executioner eyed the inspector’s cocktail-sized hideaway weapon. “So how come they don’t call you Three Gun?”

“Before tonight—” Villaluz let out a long shaky breath as he reloaded his menagerie of metal “—I have never had to pull the third one.”

Bolan considered leaving. Sirens sounded in the distance. The Hospital Angeles fire suppression system finally made up its tiny silicon mind about the gun smoke in the air and recessed sprinkler heads deployed out of the ceiling and brought on the rain. The goat-screw trifecta was complete as a baker’s dozen of armed and soggy security guards roared through the surgery doors, guns drawn, telling everyone to get down a day late and a dollar short.

CHAPTER THREE

FIA Headquarters, Tijuana

The shit storm of recrimination was long, enduring and heartfelt. La Agencia Federal de Investigación wasn’t happy and its collective, bureaucratic brain blindly pinned the tail on Mack Bolan as the donkey of its discontent. They threatened him with incarceration, litigation and deportation. Bolan weathered the storm. He had operated in Mexico before, and he had a few friends who owed him. Bolan called in markers, and the Tijuana FIA chief’s jaw dropped as Bolan handed him the phone saying, “He wants to talk to you.” It ended with stern warnings to behave himself in future. Bolan walked out of FIA Tijuana station a free man but all chances of further cooperation with local law were shot.

Bolan was radioactive in Tijuana.

The only people who would touch him would be the bad guys. Bolan walked out feeling a bit naked, as well. His Beretta 93-R machine pistol and his snub-nosed, 9 mm Smith had been confiscated. Both weapons were hard to come by, and both were probably about to become some cartel member’s prize possessions as soon as the FIA evidence people could process them, declare them destroyed, then sell them on the black market.

Something was going to have to be done about that.

Bolan had a full war load in the CIA safe house, but he didn’t want to go there until he was sure he didn’t have any tails, and he suspected he had a lot of them.

Bree Smiley walked beside him, livid beneath her bruises and stitches. “Sons of bitches. See if the Mexicans ever get reciprocity again on my—”

Bolan lifted his chin. “There’s our reciprocity right there.”

“¡Hola, amigo, muchacha!” Inspector Villaluz leaned against a gleaming black Toyota Tundra pickup and tipped his hat at them. “How was your visit?”

“We’re pretty much persona non grata,” Bolan said.

“Ah, yes.” The inspector held open the door for Smiley. She climbed in the back. Villaluz gave Bolan a solicitous grin. “So, they…ripped you a new rectum?” He savored the American colloquialism.

“They tried.”

“To be honest I was quite surprised to see you both walk out of the agency without shackles or escorts.”

“They forced me to make some phone calls,” Bolan admitted.

“I cannot imagine what that might mean.”

Bolan sized up Villaluz. Cop. Gunfighter. Corrupt, but brave, and honorable by his own lights. Bolan rolled the dice. “It means that card I gave you means something.”

Villaluz looked meditative as he pulled out into traffic. “So how do you feel? Are you hungry?”

Bolan patted the empty place where his Beretta should have been. “Actually, I’m feeling a little light.”

“Ah.” Villaluz nodded. “I think I can do something about that.”

“Lunch wouldn’t hurt either. Where do you recommend?”

“Mexicali,” Villaluz answered.

Bolan consulted his mental map. Mexicali was more than a hundred miles due east of Tijuana. “Why Mexicali?”

“Why?” Villaluz smiled happily. “They have the best Chinese food in all of Mexico!”

“And to see who follows us,” Bolan concluded.

“That, too.”

“And because I’m feeling light.”

Villaluz shrugged.

“You sure your superiors are going to approve?”

“I am getting you out of Tijuana, and I am keeping an eye on you,” the inspector replied.

“And reporting our every move?” Bolan surmised.

“Well…” Villaluz pursed his lips judiciously. “As I believe the situation requires.”

Bolan nodded. The inspector wanted the guys who had taken down Cuah Nigris, and he was willing to play both ends against the middle when it came to Bolan and his own superiors. They both knew Bolan and Smiley would be the fall guys if it went sour. It was a situation the soldier was willing to accept. “Fair enough.”

Villaluz pulled onto Highway D2 heading east. It was Sunday, and most people were heading the other way for home. The brown landscape was lined with shrines. They were constructed out of tombstones, piles of bricks or adobe, and covered with collages of curled photos, dried-up postcards of the Virgin Mary, desiccated garlands of flowers and spent votive candles. They were shrines to the dead. Most Mexican roadsides were dotted with them, but here along the border they were mostly shrines to the murdered. Along the D2 they marched like dominoes to the horizon and were a testament to the endemic violence that convulsed the country.

They made good time. Traffic wasn’t bad, and the inspector liked to drive fast. The only things that slowed them were the military and police checkpoints. Villaluz could have breezed through them on his FIA inspector’s badge but he stopped at each checkpoint and chatted up the men manning them. Bolan watched as the inspector pressed flesh and clapped shoulders. He seemed to know most of the uniforms by name, and all seemed eager to bask in the inspector’s reputation and machismo. Villaluz was dropping a net of lookouts and informants behind them on the road to Mexicali.

Bolan eased his seat back. “He’s good.”

“Mole worships the ground he walks on. Even the dirtiest cops do. The cartel street thugs respect him, and the cartel jefes in Tijuana have a hands-off policy. He doesn’t mess with them and they don’t mess with him.”

“He’s messing with them now.”

“He’s sticking his neck way out on this one, and that is uncharacteristic.” Smiley shook her head. “Cuah and the Barbacoa Four all going down while in custody has him riled up. As far as he’s concerned, someone has crossed the line, and now he’s going to cross it, as well.”

“There’s going to be a war soon.”

“Soon? Buddy, last night was World War III. I can’t wait to see what you consider a real war.”

“Stick around.”

Villaluz hopped back into his truck and peeled out with screaming tires to the cheers of the khaki-clad federales. Bolan brought up the million-dollar question. “You ever seen the cartels attack like that?”

“I have seen them brazen, bold and reckless,” the inspector said.

“You ever seen them suicidal? You ever seen them go kamikaze?”

The inspector pushed in the cigarette lighter in the dash and took his time lighting a Montana cigarette.

“You’ve seen this before tonight, haven’t you,” Bolan stated.

The usually loquacious Villaluz examined the glowing end of his cigarette. “Yes.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“The taking of heads as a terror tactic is not new among the Mexican crime syndicates. I have seen them behave—what is the English idiom—crazy-brave to prove themselves. But ruthlessly willing to die, to sacrifice themselves to kill their target, that was, as you said, kamikaze. That is new.”

Bolan shot the inspector a shrewd look. “That’s not what bothers you the most.”

“No, it is not. What bothers me most,” the inspector continued, “is the code of silence.”

“All criminal gangs have it,” Bolan said.

“That is correct,” the inspector agreed. “The Italian mafia calls it omertà, in Mexico it is simply called silencio, but as you say, in all cultures, it is basically the same. If you are a member, you do not talk.”

“And?”

“I have never seen such a silencio as I have seen now. Cartel men talk about a code of honor, but in the end? They do not have one. That much money, that much drugs? They betray one another all the time. Now I fear there is some new player in the game, and his silencio is absolute. All of the Barbacoa Four died in custody, three in ours, and finally Cuah in yours. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Many have died in federal custody and witness protection, and whoever is doing this? He takes the heads of his enemies, and he takes the heads of his own fallen. No one is talking. You saw Cuah Nigris. He was wetting himself in fear, like a dog. What does it take to inspire such fear in a known sociopath?”

It was an ugly question and Bolan didn’t have an immediate answer.

Smiley spoke from the backseat. “The DEA fears that al Qaeda has somehow infiltrated one or more of the border cartels.”

Villaluz snorted. “I wish that was the case.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow but waited for Villaluz to elaborate.

Smiley was less circumspect. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“It is the truth, Agent Smiley. I am sure terrorists from the Middle East with money could pay the cartels to smuggle men and materials across the border. But a bunch of foreigners taking over the streets of Tijuana? With an iron silencio? Forgive me, señorita, but I was born here. I have been a policeman all my adult life. I promise you, getting Mexican gangsters to get behind Muslim sharia law and sacrificing their lives unflinchingly in the name of the Holy Koran? I do not find it credible. Something else is going on.”

Bolan found himself on the same page as the inspector. “What do you think?”

“I do not know.” Villaluz stared into the smog clouding Mexicali city in the distance. He suddenly perked up as they hit the city limits. “Let us get onto business.”

“The Barbacoa Four?” Smiley asked.

“No, the best Mongolian Barbecue in Mexico.” Villaluz roared into town as if he owned it, and now he whipped through the checkpoints with a flash of his badge. He drove to the famous intersection of Avenida Madero and Calle Megar and took a turn into La Chinesca, Mexicali’s famous Chinatown. The buildings were a mix of old and new, but most had Chinese flourishes like pagoda accents and painted doors. What La Chinesca had more than anything was restaurants. They crowded every street, each one declaring in Spanish, Cantonese and English that they served the auténtico Chinese-Mexican cuisine.

Bolan had never seen so many Chinese people dressed like cowboys in his life.

Villaluz pulled down an alley and rolled up the windows against the flies and the rotting stench of the offal littering the ground from all the butchering going on to fuel over a hundred restaurants in less than four city blocks. The feral cats and dogs were some of the fattest Bolan had ever seen. He smiled at the inspector. “You were born here.”

The inspector grinned back. “You are a very astute man. I was born in Mexicali, but as you may suspect, particularly for a man of my age, when I was coming up through the ranks, if you had ambition, Tijuana was the only place to be. But this is where I grew up. Right across the street. When I was a boy, you could cut the line between La Chinesca and the rest of Mexicali with a knife, and we were always fighting the Chinese gangs.”

“What’s the tong situation like here?” Bolan asked.

“A very good question. Up until the 1950s Chinese actually outnumbered Mexicans in this city. The tongs controlled the opium trade, prostitution and gambling. Now they are a small minority, and, as you might imagine, Mexican brown heroin pushed out China white in the 1980s and the tong control with it. The cartels have pushed the Chinese out of almost all organized crime except that which the Chinese commit against one another. Though they do a brisk business in specialty Chinese brothels, gun-running and gambling.”

“What kind of gambling?”

“Mostly dog and cock fighting.” Villaluz shook his head ruefully. “The Chinese have a ferocious reputation.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, sí, if you challenge them? They have a special stipulation.”

Smiley gave Villaluz a leery look. “What’s that?”

“That if their animal wins? They get to cook and eat yours.”

“That’s sick,” Smiley stated.

“Oh, some of the restaurants in La Chinesca specialize in fighting-dog meat. Many people, both Mexican and Chinese, believe if you eat moo shu pit bull it increases your virility, and machismo.”

Smiley stared at a badly drawn graffito of a dog on the back door of the building. “No. Oh, hell no. Tell me we’re not.”

“We are. There is someone I think we should talk to.” Villaluz gave Smiley a serious look. “Señorita, I strongly recommend you order the shark fin tacos with hoisin sauce.”

Bolan opened his door and the side-street abattoir stench was almost overpowering. He gave Smiley a hand over an expansive puddle while Villaluz banged on the door. A pudgy little Chinese man in an apron and a paper hat opened the door with a cleaver in his hand. He and Villaluz exchanged a few words, and suddenly the man was all smiles and ushered them in. Smiley closed her eyes as they walked through the kitchen past meat hanging on hooks that clearly wasn’t beef, pork or chicken. Both Chinese and Mexicans labored over prepping ingredients for the Sunday dinner crowd and takeout rush. They pushed through the kitchen door out into the restaurant. The decor was half Mexican rancho and half Mandarin splendor. It was just about noon on Sunday, and the place wasn’t open for business yet. The chef led them to a booth in the back where a man sat with a bottle sipping Patrón Silver tequila.

Bolan was pretty sure he had never seen a Chinese man dressed for a square dance before. The man wore a taupe-colored Stetson hat and a pink, yoked cowboy shirt. His attempt at a beard and mustache was worse than Villaluz’s. Most of the Chinese people Bolan knew avoided the sun, but this man was deeply tanned and had crow’s feet around his eyes. The man’s sleeves were rolled up, and the calluses covering his knuckles bespoke long and intensive martial arts practice. He paused for the barest of moments as he took in the state of Agent Smiley’s face and then nodded at the inspector.

Villaluz made a graceful gesture with his hand. “Señor Cooper, Señorita Smiley, allow me to introduce Señor Juan-Waldemar Wang.”

Bolan shook his head. “That’s a mouthful.”

Wang threw back his head and laughed. “You have no idea, GI.” Wang spoke his English with a southwestern twang. “So you can just call me J.W.”

“You speak excellent English, J.W.”

“Texas A&M, business. Take a load off.”

Everyone took a seat. Wang made a vague gesture at the chef and a waiter with shot glasses and beers appeared almost instantaneously. Wang didn’t appear to believe in frivolous excesses like lime or salt. He raised his glass. “Salud.”

Everyone drank. The smooth tequila blossomed into warmth in Bolan’s stomach and he chased it with a slug from a sweating bottle of Pacífico beer. Bolan motioned for another round of shots and raised his. “Gan bei.”

Wang drank to the traditional Chinese toast “dry glass” and grinned. “Check out the culture on Cooper!” Bolan shrugged.

Wang looked Bolan up and down with renewed interest. “So my old buddy Israel is FIA, the señorita is DEA, what does that make you muchacho?”

“Concerned citizen?” Bolan ventured.

“Well, what’s concerning you today, Citizen Cooper?”

“Milanesas?” Bolan asked.

Wang sighed happily at Bolan’s request for fried, breaded steak. “Oh, we got that, and oh! And I have surprise delicacy!” Smiley squirmed visibly in her chair. Wang fired off a rapid string of orders in Cantonese, and the waiter and the chef made for the kitchen at the double. “What else is concerning you, Cooper?”

“Silencio.”

Wang leaned back in the booth in thought. “Well, you know we inscrutable Chinese practically invented the concept.”

“True, and as the inspector pointed out earlier, by comparison cartel guys talk about silence a hell of a lot more than they practice it.”

“They’re a bit loose-lipped compared to some,” Wang conceded. “What’s that to me?”

“Well, in Tijuana the silencio is starting to get enviable even by Chinese standards.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“How’s it here in Mexicali?”

Wang smiled as the waiter staggered over beneath a mountain of plates and a bucket of beer on ice. “Ah.”

The plates of beans, rice and tortillas and fried steaks were plentiful; however, the biggest point of interest were the heaping plates of fire-roasted red mezcal worms. Smiley eyed the mystery-meat milanesas with suspicion. She regarded the roasted caterpillars in open horror. Wang was throwing the gringos an open culinary challenge. Villaluz sighed with pleasure at the seasonal Mexican delicacy and dived in with aplomb. Bolan followed suit.

Bolan squeezed a wedge of lemon over his milanesa and tucked in. Despite the fact that it was delicious, he privately hoped no canine gladiator had given its life for it. Bolan finished his beer and the waiter stopped just short of doing a baseball slide to fetch him a fresh one. Bolan and the inspector ate heartily and waited politely for Wang to pick up the ball again. Smiley picked at her beans and rice.

“Well, speaking of silencio,” Wang stated, “I expect it might sound like something of a contradiction, but it’s gotten a tad more violent and more silent here in ol’ Mexicali.”

The inspector speared himself another steak from the pile. “It is the same in Tijuana.”

“It’s my experience,” Bolan said, “that Mexico isn’t a very quiet place, and when it does get quiet it means something very bad is about to happen.”

“That’s pretty astute there, Coop.”

Villaluz polished off his beer. “My friend is feeling somewhat light.”

“Well, I reckon if I were him I’d want to go heeled.” Wang pushed away from the table. “Follow me.”

Bolan, Smiley and Villaluz followed Wang back into the kitchen and down the stairs into the cellar. Sacks of beans, rice and flour formed pyramids that nearly brushed the ceiling. Wang went to a steel security door and punched in a code.

Bolan stepped into the candy store.

Small arms of all descriptions were racked on the walls and covered tables. Wooden crates of weapons were palleted in piles like the beans and rice next door. “So what can I do you for?” Wang asked proudly.

“Tell me a story,” Bolan said.

Wang chewed his lip for a moment in thought. “I’ll tell you a story about the old days. Most yanquis don’t know it, but the Chinese tongs used to run a lot of the crime on the border. When the U.S. had their anti-Chinese movements in the 1800s, many Chinese moved south across the border. In the end the Mexicans had their own night of the long-knives, but we still stayed. People still wanted opium and a place to do it. Men wanted Chinese prostitutes and places to do them. Mexico until recently was never the land of gunfighters the U.S. was, so if you wanted someone dead and didn’t have men of your own? A tong hatchet man was a good bet.”

“And then you got pushed out.”

“Yep, in the 1980s Mexican brown heroin became cheap, plentiful and of higher quality than ever before. Our China white couldn’t compete. Cocaine was the other drug of choice, and we were not a natural conduit for it. The Chinese criminal web in Mexico contracted. But if there is one thing we Chinese have it’s worldwide connections. Mexican criminals have always gotten most of their weapons by stealing them or buying them black market from the Mexican military or smuggling them in from the United States. However, we Chinese have always been a secondary, shadow-conduit. AK-47s and light support weapons to revolutionaries in the south. PRC, Taiwanese and Philippine knockoffs of MAC-10s, Uzis and M-16s to the drug cartels. We Chinese never cared, business was business.”

“And what’s your relationship with the cartels?” Bolan probed.

“For the most part we have always had a wary truce with the cartels. We are a source of guns, and the Chinese laundries these days launder money into Asian offshore banks in the Pacific.”

“And now?” Bolan asked.

“Now?” J.W. frowned. “Now, things are…”

“Beginning to take an alarming turn?” Bolan suggested.

Wang walked over to a crate and opened it with a small crowbar. “You know what those are.”

Bolan looked at a dozen AK-47s packed in straw. “Kalashnikovs.”

“You betcha. Weapon of the people. Used to be every cartel asshole wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt had to have one. I couldn’t keep them in stock. Now? Now I can hardly give them away. The cartels took the high hat and consider them peasant weapons, used by barefoot illiterate assholes. Now they want M-4 carbines like your boys use. The weapons of the world conquerors.”

Bolan was aware of this. “And?”

Wang pulled a pistol out from under his jacket. “You know what this is?”

Bolan eyed the large, uniformly gray, space-gun-looking Belgian weapon. “FN Five-seveN.”

“No, it’s a mata policias.”

“Cop killer.”

Wang nodded. “Every Mexican criminal wants one of these. Now me? I’m a .45-caliber man, give me that 12.5 mm slug any day. But the little 5.7 mm rounds this baby squirts out? Rumor is they slide right through bulletproof vests. The U.S. war on drugs? Well, in Mexico it’s starting to look like a civil war. The cops are arming up, the government is sending in the army, and the bad guys want a solution to all these assholes in body armor. They love the mata policia, and they all want that Belgian carbine that fires the same cartridge. But you know what the problem is?”

“Supply and demand,” Bolan stated.

“That’s right. Belgian guns have always been expensive, and trying to smuggle Belgian guns into Mexico, well, that’s a very interesting proposition. It takes a U.S. buyer. Five-seveNs are legal up north, but it throws in another middleman. If a U.S. citizen buys five or ten or fifty of them, he risks attracting a lot of unwanted attention, so the price goes way up. So they only come in at a very slow drip. They’re also status symbols. I heard of them going for 10k a pop down here on the border and the supply just cannot meet the demand.”

“So what’s the solution?”

“From an economic standpoint?” Wang reached into an already opened crate and pulled out another pistol. “The solution is this.”

The weapon looked like any one of a dozen 9 mm service pistols from around the world made of black metal and wearing black plastic grips. It was the Chinese QSZ-92 service pistol, and the only thing unique about it was the proprietary cartridge if fired.

Wang regarded the pistol. “Oh, I’ll admit it’s not as sexy as the Five-seveN. It’s no race gun, but the 5.8 mm cartridge it fires has the pedigree. Needle-pointed steel-core bullet? Check. Magnum velocity? Check. And—”

Smiley stared at the pistol as if it were a snake. “And half the price of a Five-seveN.”

“Try less than a tenth,” Bolan said. “And you don’t have to smuggle it across the U.S. border. You just pay off any customs official from Ensenada to Acapulco and he can bring them in by the container vessel.” Bolan smiled at Wang without an ounce of warmth. “How many are you bringing in this year, Wang? Hundreds? Thousands? You going to bring in Chinese Type 05 submachine guns in the same caliber, as well?”

Wang frowned. “Therein lies the problem.”

“What would that be?”

“I don’t want to.”

Bolan was mildly surprised. “Oh?”

“Oh, I’m telling you, my cousin in Hong Kong has them ready to go. He thinks we should market them locally as asesinos chinos.”

“Chinese assassins?”

“Yeah, my cousin earned his degree in marketing. He’s good. He wants to sell them from Tijuana to Matamoros, one end of the border to the other, from sea to shining sea.” Wang laid the weapon back in the crate. “Every punk on the street will want one.”

“And be able to afford one,” Smiley added bitterly. “You’ll make a killing.”

“You bet we would, but kill who?”

Wang turned to the inspector. “Forgive me, my friend, but the Chinese philosophy has always been to pay off the police and then get out of the way and let the Mexican criminals kill each other.”

Villaluz’s eyes narrowed but he reserved comment.

“Now it’s different. Now it’s war. The cartels aren’t just killing one another. They are killing policemen, soldiers, mayors, judges and journalists. They are taking over whole towns. Parts of whole states. The days of paying off police and politicians in Mexico is almost over. Now it’s simpler, and cheaper, to kill them. I was born in Mexico. I’m a Mexican citizen. My family is here. My business is here, and I reckon I just don’t want to live in a narco-state.”

Bolan had to admit that for a tong gunrunner who pit-fought animals and ate them J. W. Wang was a somewhat surprising man of conscience. He still kept his voice hard. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.” Wang looked Bolan straight in the eye. “What would you like me to do about it?”

“Go to war,” Bolan said. He looked around at the crates of armament. “What else have you got?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Bolan sat shotgun in Wang’s black BMW 7 series sedan. An exploratory tap of his knuckles on the body panels upon entry told Bolan the car was armored. Wang pointed to the corner across the street. “You see that guy?”

Bolan looked through the tinted window. A man as big as Bolan stood outside a barbershop on the La Chinesca street corner as if he owned it. He wore mirrored blue aviator sunglasses and a blue-and-white team Cruz Azul soccer team warm-up jacket. His black hair was pulled straight back into a short ponytail. He had zipped open the front of his jacket in the heat, and gang tattoos crawled up out of his wifebeater from his chest to his neck. By the way he was standing and occasionally adjusting his jacket, Bolan could tell he was armed. He reeked Mexican gangster, but there was something about the vibe he was throwing off that the Executioner didn’t like. Great minds thought alike, and Smiley shook her head in the backseat. “There’s something hinky about that guy, and more than just the fact that he’s a scumbag.”

“Who is he?” Bolan asked.

Wang made an unhappy noise. “It took some time to find out, but his name’s Balthazar Gomez. He used to be a sicario for the Valencia Cartel.”

Smiley shook her head again. Sicarios were cartel enforcers and hit men. “No one ‘used to be’ a sicario, you just end up in jail or dead.”

Bolan mulled over other inconsistencies. The Valencia Cartel had merged with the west coast branch of the Federation Cartel. They were enemies of the Tijuana and the Gulf cartels and didn’t have any friends in the north. Valencia operated out of the state of Michoacán, which left their boy Balthazar about fifteen hundred miles away from home. “Definitely something hinky about him.”

“The boy is positively anomalous.” Wang nodded.

Bolan liked what he saw less and less by the second. “So what’s he doing hanging around in La Chinesca?”

Wang frowned mightily. “He’s waiting for me to pay him.”

Smiley leaned in between the seats. “Pay him for what?”

Wang squirmed in his seat slightly. “He wants his taste.”

Bolan looked at the man, and he didn’t like what he saw there either. “You telling me he’s leaning on you?”

Wang squirmed even more. He might be a Mexican citizen who had been educated in the United States, but he was also Chinese and he knew he was losing face. “Yeah.”

“Who’s he working for?”

Wang stopped short of hanging his head in shame. “I don’t know.”

Villaluz had been taking all this in with increasing unease. “Forgive me, J.W. We have known each other for a very long time. You know I respect you, but I must ask. Why haven’t you killed this man?”

Wang turned his face away to look out his window into the middle distance. “Because I’m afraid.”

“Who does he work for?” Bolan repeated.

“I don’t know. All I know is that he’s hombre marcado.”

“A marked man?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah.”

“You know even in Spanish that usually means a dead man.”

“I know!” Wang became increasingly agitated. “But that’s not what it means now.”

“What does it mean now?”

“It means he bears the mark,” Wang stated.

“The mark of what?” Bolan probed.

“I don’t know.”

Bolan looked at the Chinese gangster and realized Wang was genuinely afraid of Balthazar Gomez. “Tell me what you do know.”

“I know you don’t mess with marked men.”

“Or what?”

“The first three hombres marcados I heard about in Mexicali showed up at Tijuana cartel–controlled operations or fronts and demanded tribute. Of course they got killed and killed ugly.”

“And then?”

“And then? Within a day the men who killed them were dead. Their families were dead. Their immediate friends were dead. Their business associates were dead. Everyone’s head got taken, including the heads of the dead marked men in the morgue. The cartel capos who ran the killers got anonymous messages. Silencio, and pay. Two didn’t pay and they and their families and friends ended up just like their sicarios. The third one paid. The bosses of the two who didn’t got the same message. Silencio. Pay. There were a number of slaughters up the chain of command before they paid.”

“These marked men are always out of towners?”

“Always,” Wang affirmed. “As far as I’ve heard.”

“And they’re not taking over anyone’s territory or operations?”

“No, they just demand a taste.”

“And no one knows who’s running them?” Bolan asked. “No.”

“And now you’ve got an hombre marcado in La Chinesca demanding tribute from you.”

“Yeah.”

Bolan nodded and flung open his door. “Right.”

“Wait!” Wang cried, spewing a stream of very agitated Spanish, Cantonese and American profanity in Bolan’s wake.

“Here we go,” Smiley said.

Villaluz drew both revolvers. “This should be very interesting,” he opined happily.

Cars slammed to screeching standstills as Bolan strode across the street straight at Balthazar Gomez. “Hey! Balthazar!”

Nearby citizens of La Chinesca scattered in all directions. The former sicario sneered behind sunglasses as Bolan reached the curb. “White boy? You—”

“White man,” Bolan corrected him. Balthazar Gomez’s sunglasses snapped at the bridge and his nose flattened beneath Bolan’s fist. The soldier opened his hand, which made a sound like a frying pan slamming into a side of meat as he slapped teeth out of the marked man’s mouth. Gomez staggered backward. He clawed beneath his sweat jacket and came out with an FN Five-seveN pistol. Bolan snatched the weapon out of his opponent’s hand and beat him with it. More teeth flew as Bolan returned Gomez’s gun forehand and back across his jaw.

Bolan tucked the gun away and had to give Gomez credit for still being upright.

The Executioner gave him no mercy.

Gomez flung a palsied punch in Bolan’s direction. The soldier grabbed the arm and violently spun his sparring partner into a hip throw and projected him through the barbershop window. Glass shattered into flying shards. Chinese barbers shrieked and fled. Abandoned Mexican and Chinese customers in various states of midcoif cringed and jerked in their barber chairs. Bolan stepped over the sill through broken glass and into the carnage. Gomez was dazedly climbing up a shuddering patron’s legs. The big American grabbed him and flung him against the back wall. The wall-length mirror cracked. Balthazar sank into a sink, and the basin ripped halfway out of the wall. Bolan closed both fists and delivered a series of rights and lefts.

He stepped back, and Gomez fell forward, flopping out of the sink with his face beaten and his seat sodden. He mewled slightly as he was dragged out of the barbershop by his ponytail. Bolan whistled through his teeth, and Wang’s BMW bolted across the intersection and stopped in a shriek of rubber. Villaluz and Smiley emerged as Wang popped the trunk. The inspector grabbed the sicario’s legs and between them, he and Bolan heaved Balthazar into the trunk while Smiley covered the intersection with one of Wang’s Chinese pistols. Villaluz handcuffed their perp and zip-tied his ankles with riot cuffs. Bolan slammed the trunk shut and everyone jumped back into the car as people on the street gasped and pointed.

“Drive!” Bolan ordered.

Wang was seriously unhappy. “Where?” he snarled.

Villaluz began speaking in fast and furious Spanish. Wang shook his head fatilistically as he put the pedal down and the BMW lunged back into traffic.

Bolan drew a Chinese pistol and laid it in his lap. “Where’re we headed, Inspector?”

“A place I know and no one else in this car does, including the one in the trunk. Assuming you trust me, Señor Cooper, we will be safe.”

“You don’t get it!” Wang growled. “No one is safe from the marked men! They find you! No matter where you go! No matter where you hide! It doesn’t matter who your patron is or who is protecting you! You’re dead!”

Bolan’s voice was as cold as the grave. “Just drive. Go where the inspector tells you.”

Wang muttered, but he slammed through the gears and through traffic. In minutes they were out of La Chinesca, out of Mexicali and heading into the desert. Bolan watched as brown mountains clawed upward and the uglier and uglier roads kept creeping down toward sea level. “Laguna Salada?”

The inspector laughed. “You have been here before.”

Bolan had walked the vast emptiness of the Sahara and Gobi deserts. Laguna Salada couldn’t be described as a big empty. It had too many features of interest and too much character, but it was a big piece of brown solitude and Bolan watched it unfold before him. The Laguna Salada was a desert basin bounded by the Sierra Cucapah and the Sierra Juárez ranges. In wet years it was actually an inland fishing ground and bloomed like a rose. In dry years the saline watershed was salt desert and dunes where NASA had sent astronauts to train and Hollywood had filmed Westerns and WWII North African battle scenes. Depending on the weather, it was an off-road racing mecca, a land-speed record racecourse for land and water vehicles, an amateur astronomer haven, and Mexico’s UFO and extraterrestrial sighting ground zero.

Most of the time it was a fair chunk of sere-brown solitude.

Bolan had to admit there were worse places in Mexico to deliberately get lost. “You got a place out here?”

“I know of a place out here.” Villaluz kept giving directions, and they slowly began to move out of the flats into the brown humps and hills that led into the Sierra Juárez.

A lot of things were bothering Wang, and he picked the least of his problems to avoid thinking about the major ones. The BMW bucked and slammed across road that was little more than cart path. “You know what this is doing to my alignment, old man!”

Villaluz put his hands to his breast innocently. “I did suggest we take my Tundra, but you insisted on your sedan.”

Wang muttered something that sizzled in Cantonese.

Smiley looked about at the brutal landscape. “We should have packed a picnic basket.”

“God provides,” Villaluz assured piously.

It was Villaluz who provided, and what he provided was a goat ranch. The land was too hard for cows and sheep. It was too hard for BMW 7 series sedans, as well. They took a left turn into a box canyon that was nearly invisible from the road and came to a halt outside a cubist adobe. Steam tea-kettled out from under the hood.

Bolan got out and examined the inspector’s redoubt. It was pueblo-style and used the rock face of the soaring brown cliffs as the back wall. The few windows were little more than firing slits. Bolan made most of it for original Yuman Indian construction. The satellite dish, prefab shed to the side and corrugated tin lean-to/garage with camouflage netting for a door were more recent. The small cottonwood corral for shearing and slaughtering was open and currently empty, though a few incredibly shabby-looking, random goats stared at the newcomers in slow, square-pupiled incredulousness from various vantages around the pueblo.

A donkey stood in the shade of the satellite dish and looked at the newcomers with little enthusiasm. Bolan noted the clumps of boulders and tombstone-sized shards of rock all around. Looking backward, the approach was flat save for the ugly dips and bumps that had had their way with the BMW’s suspension. The pueblo was defensible, at least by Old West or possibly the conquistador’s standards and the approach was a nice killing ground. Bolan couldn’t immediately see the bolt-hole, but he knew it had to be there.

“Nice,” Bolan acknowledged.

Villaluz sighed happily. “I am one-quarter Yuman Indian. My ancestors once lived here.”

Smiley took in the pueblo and clearly wondered about the state of the facilities. “Little slice of heaven,” she observed dryly.

Wang kicked his driver’s side tire in anger. No one was ever going to tow his beautiful black vehicle out of the Laguna Salada. “Fuck!” he opined.

Villaluz cupped his hands over his mouth. “Fausto!” His voice boomed off the box canyon walls. “Fausto!”

Long moments passed before Fausto shambled out of the pueblo. He looked like Charles Bronson might have had he lived to be a hundred. His denim jeans and cowboy boots looked about as old and faded as he did. His cotton shirt was bleached blinding white. A red headband held back his shoulder-length gray hair. His face was a sun-raddled baseball mitt with two eyes a nose and a mouth. Duct tape held his cowboy boots together. The old man carried a Mexican army surplus M-1 Garand loosely in both hands. The weapon was missing a great deal of finish, and the stock was chipped and dinged but the metal and the wood gleamed with oil.

Fausto took in the panorama of interlopers stonily and finally turned his gaze on Villaluz. “Israel.”

“Fausto!”

Fausto’s features glacially moved into the semblance of a smile. “Che, amigo.” He looked back at the unexpected guests. “Yanquis?”

“Sí.” The inspector nodded.

Fausto contemplated this weird and wonderful turn of events. “Trouble?”

“Sí.” The inspector nodded.

“Ah.” Fausto turned and headed back into the pueblo. Villaluz nodded for them to follow. Bolan popped the trunk, and he and Villaluz manhandled Gomez out of the trunk. The man blinked dazedly in the glare and nearly toppled over. Villaluz produced a switchblade and cut the riot cuffs on his ankles. Gomez shuffled under the inspector’s direction on feet stupid from lack of circulation. Bolan and Smiley grabbed gear bags heavy with ordnance. Wang spent a few mournful moments gazing at his stricken vehicle before his shoulders sagged and he grabbed some gear and followed suit.

Bolan had eaten well the past twenty-four hours, but his stomach rumbled as he entered the brown cube of the pueblo. A pot of pinto beans and bacon loaded with chilies bubbled over the hearth. They dropped their gear, and all took seats around a table made out of two sawhorses and planks. Villaluz shoved Gomez in a corner. Bolan put a Chinese pistol on the table and sat facing him. Fausto put out earthenware plates and began slopping beans and bacon and put out corn tortillas that had been steaming in a pan in the coals. Fausto gave Villaluz a questioning glance and the inspector nodded. The old man took up a clay pot and began splashing liquid into the mismatched coffee mugs around the table.

Bolan peered at the fresh pulque and smiled at Fausto. “Tlachiquero?” Fausto nodded. Tlachiqueros were men who harvested the juice of the maguey plant and made pulque. Tequila and mezcal were distilled liquors from the same plant. Pulque was simply fermented like beer, had roughly the same alcohol content and was as ancient as the Aztecs. Villaluz clapped Fausto on the shoulder. “Tlachiquero? Ranchero? Pistolero? Fausto does it all. He is a—” Villaluz savored the English euphemism “—jack of all trades.”

Fausto favored Bolan with a smile. “You like pulque, señor?”

“In the United States all you can get is the urine-in-a-can brands at the super mercado. But fresh made is always a pleasure.”

Fausto cackled like a rooster with a herniated testicle as Bolan poured back his pulque, keeping the grimace off his face. Pulque was definitely an acquired taste, and could charitably be described as milky-, musty- and sour-tasting all at the same time. But most of its manufacture across northern Mexico was an artisanal industry, and Fausto had definitely put the time and love into his trade.

Smiley and Wang shuddered down a sip each. Villaluz hit his mug with gusto. Fausto gave Gomez his attention for the first time. “Who is this man?”

“He was trying to lean on our friend Wang,” Bolan said.

Fausto took an ancient buck knife out of his pocket and flipped it open with a snap of his wrist. The blade had been sharpened so many times it was starting to resemble a scalpel. He looked to the inspector. “You want I should cut him?”

Gomez flinched but barely.

The inspector held out his mug for more pulque and measured Gomez. “Not just yet.”

The ride through Laguna Salada hadn’t done the beaten man any favors. “Perhaps he’d like a little something to cut the dust,” Bolan suggested.

“A waste,” Fausto proclaimed.

“He won’t talk with a dry throat,” Bolan replied.

Gomez drummed his heels on the floor and thrashed as Fausto pried open his mouth with fingers like cold chisels. Fausto poured a mug’s worth of pulque down the sicario’s throat. Gomez gagged and sputtered, and the old man treated him to another.

Bolan finished his meal, then rose. “I’m going to make a call. Keep our buddy Balthazar hydrated.” The Executioner scooped up a Chinese assault rifle from one of the bags and stepped outside. He owned one of the latest satellite phones in existence, but in the box canyon he just wasn’t getting full bars. Bolan pulled on a faded Boston Red Sox cap and took a hike out of the canyon. He squatted in the shade of a stand of mesquite trees and got a signal.

Aaron Kurtzman’s craggy face appeared on his touch screen. “Striker! Where are you?”

“Laguna Salada,” Bolan answered.

Kurtzman frowned for just a moment as he searched the massive database that was his mind. “What are you doing there?”

Bolan scanned his phone’s camera back toward the pueblo. “Hanging at the goat ranch with Fausto, drinking pulque. You?”

“Mostly worrying about you. You got a sitrep for me?”

Bolan gave Kurtzman the condensed version, and the computer expert began rapidly tapping keys on his end as he began pulling up CIA, FBI, DEA and NSA files. His craggy brow rearranged itself in question. “Running scared doesn’t fit this Wang fellow’s file.”

“Well, Wang isn’t typical tong, but he walks with heavy machismo around Mexicali. You’re right, it isn’t normal, and the cartel guys aren’t acting normal, either. You capture cartel guys, and they usually start making threats or get all sullen.”

“Well, I’m looking at your boy Balthazar’s file and it pretty much jibes with what Wang told you. Cuah Nigris was pretty much a sociopath who found his niche. Balthazar Gomez is about as professional as cartel guys get short of being ex-military. He was a genuine A1 sicario down in Michoacán for the Valencia Cartel. Seven kills directly associated with him but no convictions. Half a dozen more suspected.”

“Give me a timeline.”

“Last word on him is that he was picked up by the police in a general sweep six months ago in the state capital, Morelia. They couldn’t pin anything on him and let him go. Then he drops off the planet. His next known appearance is you grabbing him in La Chinesca this morning.”

“So who’s he working for?”

“That is the million-dollar question. Cartel guys betray one another all the time, but it’s almost always because of power grab or a rivalry within the cartel. For a sicario to leave one cartel and go work for another is almost unheard-of. For one, it would be an immediate death sentence from the people you betrayed, and even if another cartel used you, you’d never be trusted.”

“And yet our boy Balthazar is a thousand miles from home demanding a taste out of the Mexicali tongs, working for we don’t know who.”

“It is a conundrum,” Kurtzman admitted. “And you say Wang says that most of these marked men are out-of-towners?”

“Out-of-staters,” Bolan confirmed. “And as far as he knows, all of them bear Balthazar’s MO.”

“Hmm.” Kurtzman mulled that over. “A genuine intercartel foreign legion.”

Bolan smiled. “That’s pretty perceptive, Bear.”

“We try,” he agreed.

“I might be tempted to call it an intercartel group of untouchables.”

Kurtzman grinned in appreciation. “Even better, considering this new ‘marked-man’ status going around.”

“So who’s running them?”

“That is the question,” Kurtzman replied.

“You got anything new on the street and hospital fights in Tijuana?”

“Well, half of the victims have already been cremated and all of them were missing their heads. There’s not much to go on except the most basic of forensic evidence.”

Bolan rose to his feet. “All right, do what you can. I’ll get back to you.”

Kurtzman grew concerned. “What’s up?”

Bolan watched the rooster tails of dust rising in the distance from multiple vehicles. “Company.”

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