Mission: Apocalypse

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.”

CHAPTER FOUR