State Of War

“Look at the hinges and the knob,” Bolan suggested.

Kaino looked, then slowly smiled. The steel security door was filthy, old, weathered and well covered with spray paint. The hinges were brand-new. So was the knob, and the metal around them was dented and blackened. Whoever had rehung the door had taken a pretty cavalier attitude toward his job. “Someone took a Masterkey to that door.”

Bolan nodded. A Masterkey was usually a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with sand or some kind of granulated composite designed to slam off door hinges and locks. The soldier shook his head at the door. “You know, if you’re not going to do a job right, you just shouldn’t do it at all.”

“My mother always said that.”

“My mother always said everyone deserves a second chance.”

“A second chance to do what?” Kaino asked.

From the bag between his knees Bolan removed a Remington 870MCS shotgun with a fourteen-inch barrel and a pistol grip. “To hang a door correctly.”

“Now, that’s not the kind of shotgun a good, God-fearing Justice Department Observation Liaison Officer should carry.”

Bolan slid two metal-cased shells into the shotgun and put three yellow plastics in behind them to bat cleanup.

Kaino slid from behind the wheel and pulled his revolvers.

The men walked nonchalantly down the alley. It was midday but Russian rap music made the poorly hung door vibrate. Bolan pointed the brutally shortened 870 at the top hinge and the laser sight in the grip put a red dot on it.

“So,” Kaino inquired, “you’re just going to light up that howitzer and announce—” The shotgun made a dull slap-click noise and the hinge twisted and broke as though hit by an iron fist. Kaino stood staring. “You have a silenced shotgun.”

“No, it’s the round that’s silent. The gunpowder hits a piston inside the shell and the piston rams the breaching load out of the shell down the barrel. The piston jams in the shell mouth so the entire detonation is contained inside the shell.”

“Very James Bond.”

Bolan’s weapon slap-clicked and the bottom hinge smeared away under the breaching round’s blow. He shucked in two more yellow rounds. “You want to go first?”

“Oh, no, you’re a guest.” Kaino generously waved his guns at the door for Bolan to take point. “By all means.”

Bolan kicked the door.

The music hit them like a wall. The bass thud-thud-thudded loud enough to rattle bones while someone snarled in Russian, undoubtedly about how bad he was and how many women he had. Bolan moved down the narrow hallway, passing a kitchen with notices that it had been closed by order of the health department. Bolan and Kaino peered through the windows in the double doors that led into the main tearoom.

The place looked like a cross between a shooting gallery and a strip joint. If any tea had ever been served here, the patrons had probably smoked it. Kaino made a disgusted noise. “Well now, that’s just sad.”

Bolan nodded at the tableau in front of them. “Tragic.”

Nikita “Papi” Popov sat at a table flanked by two of his goons. In Russian parlance the goons were typical Russian “hammerheads,” big men, probably former military with mixed martial arts physiques filling out their designer tracksuits. The man on Popov’s left had the typical stubble hair cut. Popov’s right-hand goon bore a startling resemblance to a six-foot-six Jesus.

No one at the table was happy.

Indeed, all three mobsters appeared to have been beaten into pulps. They were well bandaged. Popov’s right-hand man had his right arm in a sling. The left-hand goon’s head was wrapped like a mummy. Popov appeared to have gotten the worst of it. He sat shirtless with his ribs taped and his left arm in a sling. Contusions grossly contorted the Russian prison gang tattoos covering Popov’s skin.

In typical Russian mobster fashion they sat grim-faced, drinking vodka and staring into the middle distance. The sea of bottles on the table indicated they had been at it for a while.

“Those sure are some sulky Russians,” Kaino observed.

“I’d go so far as to say morally devastated.”

“Morally devastated. I like that.”

“Let’s see if moral devastation has put them in the mood to talk,” Bolan said. “You take Bullethead and I’ll take J-man.”

Bolan and Kaino strode through the doors. Between the pounding music, the pounding of vodka and the Russians’ pounded state of being it took them far too many moments to notice.

The soldier shouted over what he could only loosely describe as music. “Mr. Popov! We need to talk!”

“Shit! Fuck!” Popov went apoplectic. “Kill them!”

The goons rose and kicked back their chairs. Bolan and Kaino closed the distance. The Jesus-looking hammerhead tried to go for the gun under his jacket. Bolan put the ruby dot of the Masterkey’s laser sight on J-man’s slung right arm and fired. The Russian screamed and dropped to his knees as his already injured wing took a 12-gauge rubber baton round.

Kaino snapped his revolvers forward with practiced ease. He rammed the muzzle of his left-hand gun into the Russian’s solar plexus like a fencer, then clouted the Russian behind the ear with the butt of his right. The Russian mobster went boneless across the table and slid to the floor in a cascade of vodka bottles. “There goes my pension...” Kaino muttered.

Bolan put a riot round into the stereo and the Russian rap ceased in a shower of sparks. He shook his head at Popov’s state of affairs. “So, besides me, who could have done this to you?”

“Fuck you!”

Bolan pumped his shotgun’s action and the laser designated Popov’s sling. Popov screamed. “No! For fuck’s sake! Please!”

“For the duration of this conversation I would advise you not to make me ask you anything twice.”

Popov stared sulkily at the tabletop.

“Tell your boys to resume their seats.”

Popov snarled. J-man sat back in his chair cradling his arm. Bullethead managed to scrape himself off the floor and did the same.

Kaino tsked as he confiscated their pistols. “Someone messed these boys up but good.”

Bolan nodded. The Russians had been systematically worked over, severely, and by pros. The soldier’s instincts told him that the beat down hadn’t been punishment or a warning. Popov and his men had been interrogated. “You seen the like around here?”

Kaino eyed the collection of contusions and broken bones with a professional eye. He lifted his chin at the bloody bandages. “Not in a long time. Let’s take a look at the wounds.”

Bolan ripped a dressing off the top of Popov’s shoulder, which elicited a shriek. Bolan’s eyes narrowed at a very nasty, ragged laceration across the Russian’s medial deltoid. The wound looked as though an animal might have made it. Kaino let out a long breath between his teeth and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Blackjack?” Bolan suggested.

“Close. I’d say a flat, beavertail slapjack sap with a coil spring in the handle, lead- and clay-loaded. A snap of the wrist will break bones. You swing side-on—” Kaino nodded at the Russian’s wound “—they’ll cut right through flesh. Jeez, there was an old-timer on the force when I first came out of the academy. He could put his halfway through the Miami phone book with a good windup.”

“Miami-Dade doesn’t use saps anymore, do they?”

“Nope.” The master sergeant sighed wistfully as he gazed backward into a bright, shining, never-to-return time in Florida law enforcement. “Banned them years ago.”

“Someone worked over our Russians.”

“Someone beat them like rugs.”