State Of War

“Well, yeah. Oh, and by the way, just so you know, Cocosino will be coming for both our asses after your little stunt last night.”

“Killer croc? Isn’t that a Batman villain?”

“Well, yes and no. I assure you Cocosino is real, and we have a trail of bodies to prove it.”

“You’re saying you have a supervillain straight out of a comic book in Miami-Dade?”

“We have a killer for hire straight out of your worst nightmare. A guy who doesn’t care. An enforcer. A guy who everyone’s afraid of. And you wrote your name on a wall. I really hope you understand the implications of that. Cocosino will be coming.” Kaino gave Bolan a very shrewd look. “But that’s not why you’re here, you’re here because...?”

“What’s cocodrilo?”

Kurtzman spoke triumphantly across the link. “Spanish from the Russian, krokodil, and that’s our link!”

“What does this crocodile stuff mean, Bear?”

“It’s bad.”

Kaino nodded. “Muy malo.”

“Krokodil is Russian for crocodile,” Kurtzman said.

“I picked up on that.”

“Krokodil is a new designer drug. It’s a desomorphine, or morphine derivative.”

“A heroin substitute,” Bolan stated.

“Right.” Kurtzman clicked a key and a window of text appeared on Bolan’s and Kaino’s laptops.

“The main ingredient is codeine,” Kurtzman informed them. “In the U.S. codeine is a controlled substance, but in Russia codeine is widely available as an over-the-counter drug.”

In Bolan’s experience what was readily available in Russia over the counter, much less under it, was appalling. A frown passed over the soldier’s face. “Most heroin addicts I’ve met would consider codeine a pretty piss-poor substitute for heroin.”

“It’s what they mix it with.”

“Like what?”

“Try gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid, even red phosphorus.”

“Bear, I’ve had Russians throw red phosphorus at me in anger. Now you’re saying they’re injecting it?”

“According to reports, the high is similar to heroin—a whole lot rougher, but if you’re a degenerate heroin addict, krokodil will get the job done, and it’s about ten times cheaper. The other benefit is, given the ingredients, you don’t need a friendly heroin dealer. You can get all the ingredients and cook it up on your own.”

“Should I even ask about the side effects?”

“The side effects are how krokodil gets its name.” Kurtzman hit a key. “Hold on to your breakfast.”

Bolan stared long and hard at the jpeg. He could tell it was a human ankle because two hands pulling down a sock framed it. Where the flesh wasn’t gray it was green. In between the blotches of necrotic color, the skin rose and cracked like a lizard’s scales. Bolan easily identified several suppurating injection sites. “This isn’t good.”

“It gets worse. A heroin high can last four to eight hours. Krokodil lasts for about ninety minutes, and by all accounts the withdrawal symptoms are obscene. Once you’re hooked on krokodil you need to hit three to four times per day. All you live for is to cook it or score it. According to the Russian medical service, once you start taking krokodil your life expectancy is a year or less. It’s the cell death and scaling that give the drug its name, and those scales eventually rot off. I’m reading accounts here of advanced users being found still alive but with their bones showing. In Russia they call it the drug that eats the junkie, literally and figuratively. It is the absolutely lowest form of addiction I have ever heard of.”

“And now it’s here in Miami-Dade.”

Kaino spoke quietly. “I’ve seen it. Smelled it, too. Any lab cooking the cocodrilo smells to the skies of iodine. So do the cooks. Most of the cooks are junkies themselves. Sometimes they pour the iodine into their wounds as remedial first aid. Sometimes they drink it. There’s some misguided mythology that drinking what they’re cooking with will make them stronger.”

Bolan had found himself drinking potassium iodide on several occasions; however, that had usually been after exposure to spent nuclear material. “So, the skin is rotting off their bones but they have very healthy thyroid glands.”

Kurtzman smiled bleakly. “That’s about it.”

“So now that El Hombre is here to save us, what are we going to do?” Kaino interjected.

“Russian chatter brought me, but it was tied up with the gang situation here in Miami-Dade. That’s why I asked for your help. Speaking of which, what are you willing to do, Master Sergeant?”

“After last night?” Kaino sighed, and not unhappily. “I’m looking forward to exploring the envelope of my first open-ended, paid, consulting leave of absence for the health and safety of the greater Miami-Dade metropolitan area.”

“Glad to hear that, Kaino.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Well, I’ve got Russians chattering about gangs. You’ve got gangs spilling Russian filth on your streets. I think we should go talk to some Russians.”

* * *

“J UST SO YOU KNOW ,” Kaino warned, “the Russian mafia isn’t one of my areas of expertise.”

Bolan sat in Kaino’s unmarked car and watched the back door of Papi’s Tea Room through binoculars. “It’s one of mine.”

“You’ve been staring at that door for five minutes.” Kaino regarded Bolan dryly. “Has it done anything yet?”

“No, but it’s not happy.”

“The door isn’t happy?” Kaino queried.

“No.”

“It’s not a happy door.”

“No, someone violated it,” Bolan said.

“It’s a violated, unhappy door?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“Look closer.”

Kaino squinted into his binoculars. “Well, it is a filthy door covered with graffiti.”