Mission: Apocalypse

“Your old buddy, Oswaldo Salcido, for one,” Bolan replied.

“Pinto!” A geyser of Spanish profanities erupted from Dominico’s mouth. “That prick? You took his word? I set him up in business! I gave him a piece of my territory when I retired as a gift! Now he fingers me? Pinche chingaso mother…” Dominico dropped back into profanity.

Bolan shut it off by giving the crime lord an extra millimeter of unwanted flexibility. “You are going to talk to me.”

“Listen…” Dominico’s elbows bent as his muscles began to give out and his crotch moved inexorably toward the floor. He hissed through clenched teeth. “You gotta let me up, man…before I never have children!”

Bolan relented a couple of inches. “Come up slow.”

Dominico didn’t rise. He suddenly dropped beneath Bolan’s grip and spun on his back like a break-dancer. His legs scythed upward and his ankles locked behind Bolan’s head. The soldier’s feet left the ground as he found himself in a scissors hold. The glass walls shook as Bolan hit the floor flat on his back and the air blasted out of his lungs. He clawed for the Beretta 93R strapped to his thigh, but Dominico grabbed his wrist in both hands. “Gonna snap you like a toothpick, motherfucker!” Dominico began pulling back to straighten Bolan’s arm and break his elbow.

Bolan found himself wrestling with a professional luchador, and he had no illusions about who was going to win a match between them. Dominico’s legs felt like two pieces of oak as they vised down on Bolan’s carotids for the strangle.

The soldier’s temples pounded as he felt the blood shut off to his brain. His only advantage was that wrestling, whether real or fake, was played by rules and most people in an emergency did what they had practiced, and a lot of wrestling holds had weaknesses for those willing to cheat. Bolan managed to turn his head two inches. Dominico howled and released the scissors hold and Bolan’s arm as the big American sank his teeth into his calf. Bolan shook his head against the head rush as he lurched to his feet. Dominico popped up and came in snarling and limping. “You dirty son of a bitch! I’m gonna—”

Bolan faked a right-hand lead but Dominico lowered his head and came in, willing to take a punch so he could get his hands on Bolan again and resume trying to snap him like kindling. Bolan fired his right hand for real—except that rather than going for a fist to the jaw he corkscrewed his thumb into the hollow of Dominico’s throat. His adversary’s eyes flew wide, and his tongue popped out as his trachea compressed. Bolan slammed his fist into the ex-drug dealer’s solar plexus, and the guy’s diaphragm spasmed against his already deflated lungs. Dominico’s face drained of blood, and he sat down on his yoga mat gasping like a landed fish. Bolan stepped in and threw an uppercut as if he were bowling to pick up a spare. His knuckles looped into the point of Dominico’s chin like a wrecking ball and ironed him out flat on the floor.

Bolan drew his Beretta 93-R machine pistol. The laser sight blazed into life as he squeezed, and it painted a ruby red dot between Dominico’s eyebrows. Dominico gazed up into the muzzle of the machine pistol dazedly and sucked for air. Bolan took a couple of long breaths himself and shook his head to clear it. “Memo? I’m done playing with you.”

“You aren’t DEA,” Dominico gasped. “And FBI doesn’t work like this. You aren’t cartel, either. Who the fuck are you?”

Bolan gazed down on Dominico. He had taken down more bad guys than most people had eaten hot meals. A lot of those bad guys had been drug traffickers. At this point most drug dealers would be screaming for mercy or screaming for their lawyer. For a former professional wrestler who’d just gotten his ass kicked and a drug dealer staring down the muzzle of a machine pistol, Dominico was remarkably calm and collected.

Bolan raised an eyebrow at the Yul Brynner look-alike lecturing in dubbed Spanish on the screen. “Memo, what is that stuff?”

“You gotta be kidding me, man.” Dominico genuinely looked shocked that Bolan didn’t know. “That’s Cielo Ahora.”

Bolan watched the bald man gesture gracefully with hands the size of catcher’s mitts while his nubile assistants twisted like dreamy-eyed circus contortionists. “Heaven Now?”

“Change your life, man,” Dominico confirmed. “Changed mine.”

Bolan peered down at Dominico with sudden intuition. “This is why you retired from the life?”

“Hey, man, everybody’s got to grow up sometime. I been a legend twice. But Santo Solomon had two cracked vertebrae in his neck, and the doctors told him if he wrestled again he’d end up in a wheelchair. No one needed to tell King Solomon that he was going to wind up dead or in prison. Not that I cared, until a couple of years ago. Gavi helped me get my head right.”

“Gavi?”

Dominico grunted up at the screen and the bald man with the piercing eyes. “Gavi.”

“So you quit the life because you found God?”

“Found Gavi.” Dominico grinned. “The rest I’m working on.”

Bolan gave Dominico a long, calculating look. “Memo, you want to go for a ride?”

Dominico’s face went flat. “I’ve seen that movie, man.”

Bolan shrugged. The ruby dot of the laser never wavered from Dominico’s forehead. “I can kill you now.”

Dominico weighed the steel in Bolan’s blue eyes. “A ride is good.”

CHAPTER THREE

Campo Militar No. 1

“Uhh…” Dominico looked unhappily at the gates of Mexico City’s military base. “You know me and the military don’t get along so good.”

“Relax, you’re with me.” Bolan tossed Dominico the keys to his handcuffs. “And I won’t tell them who you are if you don’t.”

Dominico removed his manacles and rubbed his wrists. “You know this is kidnapping.”

Bolan nodded through the Caddy’s tinted glass at the Mexican military policemen with assault rifles guarding the gate. “Take it up with them.” Bolan rolled down the window and displayed an ID card and a pass. The guard nodded and waved them in.

Dominico watched barracks and military buildings pass by. “Man, just who the fuck are you?”

Bolan ignored the question. Campo Militar No. 1 was a sprawling establishment with many of the Mexican Army’s branches having headquarters. Bolan knew exactly where he was going. He had already been there once earlier in the week. He drove up to a complex of tents that had the universal medical Red Cross flag flying over them. “We get out here.”

“A hospital? Why are we—”

Bolan got out and went into the tent complex with Dominico muttering and reluctantly following on his heels. Two guards with subdued Special Forces flashes on the sleeves of their uniforms were smoking cigarettes in the foyer tent. Both nodded at Bolan in recognition. They’re hands moved vaguely toward the grips of their FX-05 Fire Serpent assault rifles as they eyed Dominico. “Who’s he?”

Bolan smiled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The Special Forces corporal’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Try me.”

“You don’t recognize him?” Bolan shrugged. “That’s Santo Solomon.”

The guard’s jaw dropped. “No fucking way!”

Dominico was appalled.

“Do it!” the guards begged in unison. “Do it!”

Dominico shot Bolan a look, sighed, put his fists on his hips, flexed his pecs, flared his lats, turned his head and lifted his chin as he seemed to lean slightly into a wind only he was aware of. The profile was unmistakable. You could almost see the silver cape flowing behind him. “Santo!” the guards cried. “Santo Solomon!” Both men snatched up pens and paper from the desk and demanded autographs. Bolan and Dominico were both given neck badges and proceeded past the checkpoint while the guards stopped just short of squealing like schoolgirls and fainting in Dominico’s wake.

“I can’t believe you told them who I was, man. You never reveal masked wrestlers,” Dominico muttered. “It isn’t cool.”

“I had to tell them something. I could have told them you were King Solomon the notorious drug smuggler instead. You saw the patches on their uniforms? Those young gentlemen are Special Forces and trained specifically to kill people like your other alter ego.”

“Man…” Dominico wasn’t mollified. “What am I doing here?”

“There’s something I want you to see.” They passed through a canvas corridor and came into a large medical tent. “And some people I want you to meet.”

A short, fat bald man in a white lab coat waddled forward quickly. He was followed by a short, lean man in Mexican military camouflage with the subdued three-star insignia of a colonel. The doctor stared at Dominico in awe. “It’s true!”

Dominico sighed heavily. Bolan suspected the guards had gotten on their cell phones. Bolan made introductions. “Dr. Corso, Colonel Llosa, meet Memo Dominico.”

The doctor giddily pumped Dominico’s hand. “You know, I grew up watching El Santo, the original.”