Mission: Apocalypse

“In anger?” Bolan prodded.

“Yeah! Yeah, I did as a matter of fact! I was in a firefight! With Colombians in Baja!”

Bolan probed further. “Did you hit anything?”

“I…” Dominico’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know, man. It was dark, and across an airstrip.”

“I see.”

A city map and satellite photos were spread out across the table. Bolan tapped the spot where Amilcar had a house on the Culiacán River. “Najelli, you’re going to drive right up. Memo and I will be in the trunk. All eyes will be on you and I doubt they’ll search the car. They will probably search you for a wire. They’ll find your gun, but Varjo probably expects you to have one. Expect to have it taken from you. Ask for a drink, start crying again and then tell him you want to be alone with him. I want Varjo separated from the rest of the household, so try to get him into the bedroom as soon as possible.”

Busto grinned. “That shouldn’t be hard.”

“No.” Bolan gave her an appreciative glance. “No, it shouldn’t. Once you’re inside Memo and I will extract ourselves from the car and make our way to you. With luck we’ll achieve total surprise.”

“And then?”

“Then we have a quiet talk with the man.”

DOMINICO LAUGHED in the darkness. The trunk of Busto’s Grand Marquis was pitch-black, but it was cavernous. Both Bolan and Dominico were able to recline on their sides on piles of blankets in relative claustrophobic comfort as the sedan bounced over the potholed streets of Culiacán.

“What?” Bolan inquired.

“The song.”

Bolan perked an ear. Busto had her stereo cranked up playing cassettes of old school narcocorrido music. The corrido was a form of Mexican norteño folk music. The narcocorridos were folk songs about various drug smugglers and their exploits. They had become popular in the sixties when the American drug culture had exploded and enterprising Mexican criminals had exploited it. Today it was a music industry unto itself in Mexico. The music was fast and the Mexican slang so thick Bolan couldn’t make much of it. “What about it?”

Dominico laughed again. “It’s about me. That song is ten years old. It never made it to CD, not that I know of. It’s called ‘De Las Alas Hasta el Rey.’”

Bolan flexed his Spanish. “On the wings until the king.”

“Very good, man.” Bolan could almost hear Dominico grinning in the dark. “The song is about a lowly narcotraficante flyboy who rose on angel wings to become the great King Solomon.”

Bolan raised a bemused eyebrow. “Angel wings?”

“I didn’t write it, man! Anyway. Najelli? She’s my friend. She’s playing it to give me courage.”

Bolan hoped it was working. Dominico had been twitchy since Busto had slammed the lid shut. It wasn’t locked. Bolan was holding it shut with a piece of twine, but on every continent on Earth with a drug trade, being put in the trunk of a car was a death sentence, and this mission was starting to turn into a suicide run. “How you holding up?”

“I’m okay.” Dominico was silent for a moment. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Who are you? I mean…you’re not a cop.”

“No,” Bolan agreed.

“You’re not a soldier.”

“I was,” Bolan admitted.

“But not anymore.”

“No.”

Dominico spent long moments digesting this. “So…what the fuck, man?”

Bolan gave him the short and sanitized version. “I was in a war. That was bad enough, but when I came back I found that some bad people had gotten into my world. They got close to me and mine. They got too close, they did damage and it got ugly.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I killed them, Memo. I killed them all.”

“Jesus…So you’re the Terminator?”

Bolan chose his words carefully. “You remember those campesinos dying of radiation poisoning in Mexico City?”

“I’m having nightmares about it.”

“I’m here to stop it if I can. If you’re not down with that, then knock on the trunk and Najelli can let you out. As far as I’m concerned you’ve done your bit, and we’re square.”

“No way, man. I’m down, and I’m not going to let Najelli down. I have your back. I’ve been trying to get my head right. I’ve been trying to reject violence. But some shit, like nuclear radiation shit, has to be resisted.”

“Righteous enough.” Bolan nodded. “But do me one favor.”

“What’s that, amigo?”

“That thing at the back of your Uzi?”

“What thing at the back of my Uzi?”

“The folding stock.”

“What about it?”

“Deploy it.”

“Man?” Dominico made a dismissive noise. “I never use that thing.”

Bolan sighed. “That’s what I figured.”

Busto knocked three times on the roof. It was the signal that they were arriving. Bolan aimed his Beretta at the trunk lid as he felt the ancient car slow. The safety on Dominico’s Uzi clicked off in the darkness and the weapon clicked again as he slapped the folding stock into place. Dominico radiated renewed tension in the trunk’s pitch-black confines. “Shit,” he said. “Here we go.”

Bolan spoke quietly. “Memo.”

“Yeah?”

“Relax, shut up and don’t shoot unless I do.”