State Of War

Kaino grinned from ear to ear. “Oh, I gotta have one! Tell me they make these in Miami Heat!”

Bolan kept his eyes on the crying, cracked-ankle-hugging Salami on the floor and recovered his Beretta. “That can be arranged.”

Kaino sailed the cap back at Bolan. “Sweet!”

Bolan caught it and sat on his heels beside the gangbanger. “So, Baloney? Braunschweiger? Headcheese? What was your processed meat name again?”

“Fuck you!”

Bolan cocked back the cap in his hand.

“No more hat!”

“How much hat you receive is up to you, Summer Sausage.”

“I want my lawyer...” Salami mewled.

“No lawyers here. Just you, me, Kaino and God.”

“Oh, God...”

“And God’s busy. So he sent me,” Bolan said.

“Who are you!”

“You tell me.”

Salami gulped, shuddered and went from pale to green with the telltale nausea of broken bones.

“Don’t you puke on my shoes,” Bolan warned. “Now, who am I?”

“You’re El Hombre...” Salami whispered.

“That’s right. So I have one question for you. Who’s supplying you with codeine?”

Salami blinked. “What?”

“Cocodrilo’s main ingredient is codeine. Codeine is a controlled substance that requires a physician’s prescription to obtain and a pharmaceutical lab to manufacture. Cocodrilo needs codeine in bulk for production. Tell me who’s supplying it and I’ll leave you alone.”

“I don’t know!”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Bolan asked.

“I mean I don’t know!”

Bolan packed the brim of his cap into his palm several times for emphasis. “Last chance, Lunch Meat.”

“No one! I mean I don’t know!”

“You don’t cook it?” Bolan asked.

“No way, man!”

Bolan frowned.

“Man, only the junkies cook it! And they’re ripping off drugstores and burglarizing their grandma’s medicine cabinets and shit! We get it prepackaged!”

Bolan regarded the hobbled, panic-attacking drug dealer at his feet for long moments.

Kaino waved his revolvers. “You believe this shit?”

“Do you?”

“Well, that is the thing,” Kaino admitted. “The labs we’ve found aren’t set up for distribution. Just junkies cooking themselves to death and anyone who can pay. There’s too much product and not enough producers. Give him the hat again. Just to verify.”

Salami shrieked and clutched his ankle and elbow. “No more hat!”

“All right, then one last question.” Bolan leaned in close. “Who distributes to you?”

Salami shuddered. “Oh, God...”

CHAPTER FOUR

Safehouse

“So it’s a shell game.” Kaino bit off half a Cuban sandwich of his own making and chewed meditatively. “And the game is where’s the codeine at.”

Bolan also ate a sandwich, and cleaned his Beretta on the kitchen table. Rubber bullets made for interesting bore cleaning. “That seems to be the size of it. I just can’t see any underground local manufacturer.”

“What about a mainstream manufacturer?” Kaino suggested. “Keeping double books and diverting the goods to the streets.”

“I have people on that angle, but it’s not my first guess.”

“You think the Russians are smuggling it in?”

Bolan had been giving that a lot of thought. “Hard to imagine the Russian mafia smuggling codeine across the Atlantic just so local croc-heads can cook it at pocket change prices. Hard to see the profit margin being worth it, much less the logistics of the endeavor.”

“You think it’s someplace a lot closer to home.”

“Whoever is doing this is doing it through the Latino gangs in Florida. That’s our connection until something better pops up. We pound them until something breaks open.”

“Listen, man, I do admire your style.”

“Thanks. But?”

“I mean, I love hammering the bad guys with the semiauto Pez dispensers.”

“Who doesn’t?”