State Of War

Kaino laughed. “Yeah, but all the pencil erasers at hostile velocity, flash-bangs and tear gas in the world aren’t going to break this organization. This can’t last. We’re about to take it up to distributor level. Man, I just don’t how much longer your less-than-lethal approach is going to work.”

“I agree. We keep playing it like this, the bad guys are going to start thinking we get squeamish at the sight of blood. Assuming his people haven’t already beheaded him, Salami is most likely going to snort himself a sinus load of chemical courage, lose his fear of the hat and want some payback.”

“And, so?”

“The fact is, Kaino, we’re going to be drenched in blood and bodies before this one is over. Like up to our eyeballs. What do you say?”

“Well, since you ask, I say let’s kick this pig and when it’s over the Pink Champale is on you.”

“Pink Champale?”

“What’s the matter, El Hombre, you afraid to see how the other half lives?”

Bolan had drunk everything from cobra venom sacs swimming in cognac in an opium den in Vietnam to fermented mare’s milk in a yurt in Mongolia. He was afraid that Pink Champale might just test him. “Done.”

“Well, now we’re cooking with gas!”

“Any other concerns?”

“Well, you’re El Hombre, international ass-kicker of mystery, and you might as well have dropped in from Mars. I suspect you’ll drop off the planet again with equal facility. But me? Everybody knows me, and everybody knows where I live. You know what I’m saying?”

Bolan nodded. “You’re worried about your family.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Maybe you should call them.”

Kaino frowned. “Yeah, maybe I should.” He took out his cell and punched a preset number. A smile broke out across his face at the sound of his wife’s voice. “Che, mi amor. How are you and the kids?” The master sergeant’s face slowly went blank as his wife spoke to him. “You’re on a plane?” Kaino listened for long moments. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I love you, Marisol. Send me a postcard when you can.” Kaino cut the connection. “You son of a bitch.”

Bolan stared at Kaino speculatively. “You’re not going to start crying, are you?”

“My Marisol, she told me she couldn’t call me, and was told not to tell me where she and the kids are headed.”

“I don’t know where they’re headed, either, Kaino, and if this goes bad and we’re on the bad end of the blackjacks, then that’s for the best. Should the absolute worst happen on this one, your family will be taken care of regardless. I can tell you a gal I know picked out someplace very nice for them. In the Caribbean, all-inclusive and all expenses paid. I know your family is worried about you, but what I can tell you is this. In a few hours they’ll be worried about you in a tropical paradise.”

Bolan’s computer beeped. “What’s that?” Kaino asked.

The soldier frowned as his laptop’s screen flicked into the security suite screen. It was almost redundant in this modern age, but someone had cut the landline to the safehouse. “Kaino, try to call anybody on your phone.”

Kaino hit Redial to his wife and scowled. “I got nothing. I’m talking zero bars.”

“Jamming cell phones seems a little out of Salami’s pay grade.”

“Yeah, him and the next few Zetas up the food pyramid, as well. What do you think?”

“You’re about to get your bloodbath, Kaino. Gear up.”

Kaino checked the loads in both of his revolvers and picked up one of the semiauto shotguns. He clapped in a drum with a piece of red tape on it that meant it was loaded with lead. Bolan took up an MP-5/10 submachine gun. It looked like a Heckler & Koch that had been going to the gym. Bolan was operating on urban, U.S. soil. He wanted knockdown power without tearing up the neighborhood. The “10” stood for 10 mm and his weapon was loaded with subsonic, truncated cone, flathead bullets. Every light in the house went out as someone cut the power.

Window glass shattered as bullets tracked in a blind search-and-destroy swath through the room. “Shit!”

Bolan racked the bolt on his weapon. “Here they come.”

The front door flew off its hinges beneath a hostile boot. Bolan and Kaino both closed their eyes and stuck their fingers in their ears as the flash-bang wired to the door went off. Bolan moved at a crouch to the hallway with Kaino on his six. The lead invader had stepped directly into the flash-bang’s audio-visual assault. The attacker didn’t fall, but he shook his head to clear it. That bespoke some training. Bolan aimed down the hall and put three rounds into the man’s chest. The fact that he didn’t fall signaled body armor. Bolan raised his aim and put a bullet through the shadowy figure’s head.

The soldier hit the tactical light attached to his weapon and let the next man in have 7,000 candela on strobe function. In the pulsing light show Bolan saw a man in a coverall, armor and night-vision gear. As the gunner shot high and wide, the Executioner put a bullet between the lenses of the man’s solarized NVGs.

Suddenly everything was silent.

Dogs began barking and the distant sounds of an alarm began to manifest themselves on the street outside. Thunder clapped as the flash-bang wired to the kitchen door went off. The enemy played it smart and didn’t immediately rush in. Bolan took the opportunity to dive through the bedroom door and roll up with his weapon leveled. Outside a man shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

The interior walls of the old bungalow were 1970s construction and might as well have been paper-thin. Bolan had taken note of where the kitchen door would be in relation to the bedroom wall. He deliberately burned the remaining twenty-five rounds in his magazine on full-auto through the bedroom wall and into the kitchen behind. Men screamed as Bolan vectored his bullets in below the waist.

The soldier slapped in a fresh magazine and slammed the bolt home. “Kaino!”

The master sergeant didn’t have to be told twice. Kaino entered the kitchen with his semiautomatic shotgun booming on rapid fire. Bolan took Kaino’s six and knocked down the next two men who came through the front door with head shots.

Everything went quiet again.

Bolan spoke softly. “Kaino?”

“I have four men down in the kitchen.”

“I have four down in the hall.”

“You figure a pair of two-man teams, front and back?”

“Plus the sniper, and command and control should be very nearby if not on the scene.”

“I want that sniper’s ass.”

Bolan eyed the master sergeant’s crouching bulk in the gloom. “You hit?”

“No, but my sandwich press is.” Kaino growled.

The soldier moved silently to the kitchen entry. He stared at Kaino’s perforated kitchen appliance lying among the broken glass and shattered crockery. Kaino wasn’t exaggerating. His sandwich press would never panini again. “Bastards,” Bolan agreed. “Let’s take them.”

“I’m figuring it has to be the roof catty-corner across the street. It’s the only two-story on the block and it has a For Sale sign.”

Bolan’s sniper instincts told him Kaino was most likely right.

“So do we play it?” Kaino asked.

“You could stick your head out.”

“And you’ll pop whoever blows my head off?” Kaino said.

“Yeah.”