State Of War

TAKE NO PRISONERS

Death floods the streets of Florida as rival gangs kill for blood rights to the distribution of a new synthetic drug, Crocodil. The Russian substitute for heroin, it’s the ultimate prize in the drug turf wars—a cheap high that brings even cheaper death. As rival Mexican and Salvadoran cartels shoot it out for kingpin status, Mack Bolan joins the war. Unleashing incendiary hell on gang territory in Miami, he blasts his way through a pipeline that leads south to Guatemala, where a corrupt Swiss pharmaceutical company has set up manufacturing. Allied with a couple of locals equally dedicated to stopping this lethal fix before it hits Main Street, U.S.A., Bolan faces an army of hard-core mercenaries and miles of cartel blood lust. Outgunned but never outmaneuvered, the Executioner doesn’t soft-sell his brand of payback to these merchants of human misery. Bolan goes in hard and without mercy.

Bang scythed the grenadier’s legs out from under him

Bolan rose to one knee, swung up both .45s and emptied them into the remaining enemy gunner. He dropped his left-hand gun and clawed for his last magazine. The two surviving bikers tore away.

The soldier got to his feet and lurched into the street. The biker he had shot was crawling away. Most people didn’t crawl away with three .45’s in their back. That told Bolan the guy was wearing body armor.

The Executioner searched for his team. Kaino was helping Svarzkova to her feet and weeping from the CS stench she gave off. Bang had reloaded and was covering Bolan, who could barely hear his own voice as he shouted, “Banger, we’re taking this guy with us! Get the car. We’re out of here!”

State of War

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Junk is the ideal product… The ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through sewer and beg to buy.

—William S. Burroughs

There’s a new drug on the scene, one that consumes the addict’s flesh from within. What kind of madness is this? We must drive the people who promote this horror back to the sewers they emerged from. Permanently.

—Mack Bolan

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Chuck Rogers for his contribution to this work.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

Miami Metropolitan Area, Florida

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, slid into the unmarked car and stuck out his hand. “Evening, Master Sergeant.” Miami-Dade Police Master Sergeant Gadiel Kaino could have been Bill Cosby’s younger, bigger, redheaded brother who had been a prizefighter but let himself go. The Puerto Rican cop shook Bolan’s hand. “Call me Kaino.”

“Call me Cooper.”

“You sure you want to do this? They eat white men alive where you want to go, and they’ll eat me for aiding and abetting.”

Bolan had done his research. Kaino had a large reputation in the Miami Metropolitan Area for breaking rules, stepping on toes and being one of the toughest cops in the county. Bolan noted the small tattoo of a heart with a scrolling N inside it on the flesh between his right thumb and forefinger. Kaino had been a member of the Puerto Rican Netas gang in his youth. “I’m down if you are.”

Kaino was down. He stepped on the gas and the eighties-vintage Crown Victoria rumbled forward. Bolan could feel the tightness of the suspension as Kaino took them into the bowels of the Metro. Kaino was clearly wary of Bolan. “Justice Department Observation Liaison Officer?”

Bolan grinned. “That would be me.”

“You aren’t Marshals Service.”

“No, but I know some good marshals.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Kaino’s eyes narrowed. “You sure as hell aren’t a lawyer.”

“No.”

“Homeland Security?”

“Nope.”

Master Sergeant Kaino had come up through Miami-Dade during the explosion of cocaine and the war on drugs of the 1980s. He gave Bolan a disparaging look. “Tell me you aren’t CIA.”

“I’m not CIA,” Bolan confirmed.

“Okay, so, not to be a dick or anything...”

“But...?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

Bolan looked at the ID badge hanging over his chest. “I’m a Justice Department Observation Liaison Officer.”

Kaino made a noise. “That’s messed up.”

“Yeah, they’re usually a little more creative.”

“I hope you brought some heavy iron, man. Where we’re going isn’t good.”

Bolan glanced at his bulging gear bag in the back. “The hugest.”

Miami-Dade sweltered in the summer heat, and they instantly lost the breeze off the ocean as Kaino took them inland. The neighborhoods went from bad to worse to urban war zone. Groups of people on porches and street corners gave the Crown Vic very hard looks. Bolan noted a number of the hard cases gave Kaino wary nods of recognition and respect. A small minority waved. On a corner a pair of prostitutes dressed like aerobics instructors shrieked happily as they rolled by. “Hola, Kaino!” “Looking good, Papi!”

“Hola, Allana!” Kaino called. “And not as good as you, Bebe!”

Allana and Bebe fired off a string of sexually challenging remarks in Puerto Rican Spanish that Bolan wasn’t quite sure he wanted to understand. “Kaino, those girls are dudes.”

Kaino regarded Bolan with great seriousness. “I have a broad spectrum of support in the Miami-Dade Latino community.”

“Broad-spectrum support is good,” Bolan acknowledged.

Kaino pulled into what could only be described as urban Armageddon. A lonely gas station sat in the island of glare from the lights over its pumps. Most of the streetlights on the block around it had been shot out. Nearly all the telephone lines had shoes tied together thrown across them. Gang graffiti was everywhere.

Bolan regarded the little old-fashioned filling station with interest. “Interesting.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

The soldier grabbed his gear bag, and Kaino led him around back. There was little to see other than a weed-choked lot and some warped and ancient picnic benches. Someone had smashed off the doorknob to the men’s room. Someone else had painted an X-rated fever dream of an Aztec priestess on the door. Even Bolan had to admit it was a triumph. It was such a work of art that no one had tagged it. He noted the security camera over the door hung by wires like a half-decapitated chicken. Kaino drew a pair of four-inch Smith & Wesson revolvers. Bolan carried a .50-caliber Desert Eagle in one hand and a Beretta 93-R machine pistol in the other.

Kaino regarded Bolan’s steel. “Jesus! You weren’t kidding!”

Bolan shrugged.

Kaino kicked the door. “Miami-Dade!”

The men’s room was empty.

Bolan mentally cataloged the wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-ceiling gang graffiti covering the bathroom. It appeared that Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel and Mara Salvatrucha-13 all claimed this men’s room. Given the acts of gastrointestinal Armageddon covering the floor and the facilities, it appeared that none of the gangs felt compelled to take responsibility for the state of hygiene and maintenance of their claimed territory. Bolan gave Kaino a wry look. “The Netas don’t seem very well represented in this establishment, Kaino.”

“La Asociación del Ñeta is a cultural organization, Cooper.” Kaino scowled. “And if we were in charge of this lavatory, people would be wiping their asses with toilet paper rather than the walls.”

“You know, I like the way you said that with a straight face. That was good.”

Kaino smiled despite himself. He looked around the lavatory measuringly. “But you’re right. The Netas aren’t well represented. Back in the day the Netas ran the prisons in Florida. Only the Aryans and the Latin Kings dared to give us any static on the inside. On the outside the Colombians ran the drugs and everyone fought for their business. Mexicans were mules for the Colombians. Mexico was just a transshipment point. And El Salvador?” Kaino scoffed. “A mud puddle where they ate guinea pigs. A Central American tragedy you heard about in the news. Now the Mexicans run everything. The Mexican cartels are the alpha predators now. They’re expanding south as well as north. And MS-13 is like a bunch of pit bulls roaming the streets, animals, biting everything that moves, and moving in on whatever they can move in on.”

Bolan was intimately aware of the ebb and flow of gang structure in the Americas. He had spilled blood fighting it. Kaino had obviously lived it, survived it, threaded the eye of the needle and come out a lawman. “Hard times for the old association these days?”

“We aren’t what we were. Netas are still strong on the inside, but out on the streets?” Kaino slowly shook his head. “MS-13 is pushing my people, and they push hard.”

“So why did you bring me to this shithole again?”

“Oh, this is a happening nightspot around here.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, it is. It’s the only gas station for blocks around. The rest all closed their doors. Every gangster’s whip needs gas, and no one wants to start a war over this station and see it close.”

Bolan ran his eyes over the mystery stains streaking the walls. “Like the Highlander, holy ground.”

“That was a good show.” Kaino pointed to the wall over the sinks. All the mirrors had been ripped out, and the wall there was an almost Jackson Pollockian fusion of gangland graffiti tags piled one over the other in such profusion that it was a startlingly profound work of art unto itself. “That’s the message board. That paint has to be at least an inch thick by now.”

“The gangs leave each other messages here.”

“Hey, man, during the cold war even Washington and Moscow had a red phone. Sometimes you have to talk.”

“People come here, check the latest messages and word spreads out,” Bolan concluded.

“That’s it exactly, you saw those benches outside? Sometimes the gangs come here when they need to have an actual parley.”

“So if this is holy ground, how come we have to walk heeled with big steel?”

“Because around here I’m considered dangerous big game,” Kaino told him. “And you? Well, let me tell you something Mr. Blue-Eyed Devil, you would be a genuine trophy. Get it?”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

“You’re scaring the shit out of me. I’m really wondering what I’m getting into.”

Bolan nodded. “I get that a lot.”

“I just bet you do.”

Bolan shrugged. “Want to see something cool?”

“Oh, I can’t wait.”

The soldier reached into his bag and took out a couple of cans of spray paint.

“No!” Kaino was appalled. “Oh, hell no!”

Bolan had run missions in Mexico and El Salvador. On several occasions he had run roughshod over the organized crime affiliates using the name El Hombre. He wondered if anyone in Florida would have heard of the moniker, and whether it would send any reverberations in the right directions. Bolan had practiced his painting skills before he had come to Florida. He did a credible job of painting El Hombre in bloated, amoebalike letters along with the date and the symbols that said El Hombre was now taking ownership of this men’s room. Bolan finished with a flourish of his own design.

Kaino’s jaw dropped. “Mother of God...”

“You like?”

“You just signed your death warrant,” Kaino stated.

“Fourth one I signed today.”

Kaino’s face went blank. “What?”

“Oh, I painted similar tags in Zeta, Gulf and MS-13 territory earlier.”

“Why...you...” A stream of Puerto Rican invectives poured forth from the master sergeant.

“I didn’t tag any Neta territory.”

“You fuckin better not have, ese, or I’ll kill you myself. Not that I need to, because you just killed us both.” Kaino eyed Bolan scathingly. “You already knew about this place, didn’t you?”

“Knew about it, but I appreciate the guided tour, and the sitrep from a veteran on the ground.” Bolan checked his watch. “They should be coming soon.”

“And that’s another thing. What do you think is going to happen when the Zetas, Gulf and MS-13 all roll up on this little slice of heaven at the same time?”

“Tension, apprehension and dissension?” Bolan suggested.

Kaino was so upset he forgot he was holding revolvers in both hands as he waved his arms up and down in outrage. “It’ll be fucking World War III! And you started it!”

“It’ll be Armageddon, but a focused Armageddon.”

“Oh, and how are you going to focus three rival gangs?”

“We’re going to make them focus on us.”

Kaino simply stared. Bolan’s phone rang. “Hold on, I need to take this.” He checked the caller icon and answered. “What’ve we got, Bear?”

Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman’s voice came across the line from the Computer Room at Stony Man Farm in Virginia. “We have multiple vehicles converging on the filling station from all directions.”

“Give me visual.”

A mile up in space a National Security Agency satellite peered down at Kaino’s corner of Florida and sent its feed to Bolan’s phone. The soldier saw the grid of streets that framed the neighborhood in greens and grays. Well over a dozen automobiles were converging on the station. He held out the phone so Kaino could see. “They’re coming.”

Kaino blinked. “You have a helicopter watching us?”

“Satellite.”

“You have a satellite.”

Bolan grinned. “Cool, isn’t it?”

* * *

T HE E XECUTIONER unzipped his bag and pulled out what appeared to be a pair of assault rifles on steroids.

“Jesus!”

“AA-12 semiautomatic shotgun.” Bolan slapped in a massive drum magazine and racked the action. “I know, you’ve never fired one before. So a buddy of mine installed a laser sight.” He squeezed the grip and a red dot appeared on the closest stall.

“So we’re just going to hose down Zetas, Gulfs and the MS-13 boys in a premeditated and, may I say, arranged act of mass murder?”

“Your weapon holds twenty-four rounds. That drum is loaded with tear gas.” Bolan pulled out a gas mask with night-vision goggles and an armored vest in the master sergeant’s size. He pulled out a second drum. “This one is loaded with rubber buckshot. Keep your shots low.”

Kaino stared at the weapon as if Bolan had handed him a two-headed baby.

“Come on,” Bolan cajoled. “You used to be Neta, tell me you’re not down with laying a little less-than-lethal hurt on these vato interlopers.”

A slow smile spread across Kaino’s face. “You know, this is almost like a wet dream, but I like my job. Plus, can I tell you something, just between you and me?”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t like lifting weights or having sex with men, and that’s all there is to do in prison.”

“Sorry, almost forgot,” Bolan pulled a business card from his shirt pocket. “Here.”

Kaino’s face went slack. Bolan geared up. The cop slowly shook his head. “That is the Seal of the President of the United States.”

Bolan slapped the Velcro tabs on his armor shut. “Yeah.”

“So you like, carry around presidential pardons in your pocket?”

“No, but I will take full responsibility for anything that happens here tonight, you were never here, and if for any reason someone disputes that, that is the phone number they can call and complain to.”

“Dude, who are you?”

“Gear up or scoot. Clock is ticking.”

Kaino geared up. “Well, seeing as how you are a guest of the Miami-Dade Police Department I would be derelict in my duty if I abandoned you to your folly.”

“I like your attitude, Kaino. You’ve used night vision before?”

“Nothing as cool as this, and never fitted to a gas mask.”

Bolan adjusted the mask to Kaino’s face and locked the night-vision in place. The soldier assembled his own unit. Kurtzman’s voice spoke on speaker. “Hostiles arriving on site.”

“Copy that, Bear.” Bolan pulled his mask down over his face. “On my mark.”

“Copy that, Striker. On your mark.”

Bolan heard vehicles screeching up to the gas station. Angry voices called back and forth in Spanish as more gangsters arrived by the second. Bolan walked out and strode around the station. Low-riders, SUVs, vans and pickups filled the parking lot. Gangsters shouted, swore and pointed angry fingers. The name El Hombre flew back and forth. Kaino was right, these weren’t upper echelon cartel men, they were gangbangers, and they were strangely reluctant to start shooting here at the one place they all respected.

“Kill the lights,” Bolan ordered.

“Denying your area power grid access...now.”

Gangsters of various stripes shouted in alarm as the street went dark. Bolan clapped the master sergeant on the shoulder. “Lay down the law, Kaino.”

The cop began to fire.

The gas rounds thudded from the barrel of the big 12-gauge in slow, methodical fire. They didn’t have a huge payload but Kaino had a lot of them. Bolan poured fire in on top of his partner’s, arcing high for a two-tiered barrage.

“Shoot and scoot, Kaino. They can’t see you but they can see your muzzle-blast.”

Pistols popped in answer from among the cars. Bolan and Kaino moved and dropped gas into the milling gangsters without mercy. The return fire came ever more sporadically. Bolan popped his drum, slipped in a specific 5-round clip and stalked toward the gas cloud.

“Cover me, Kaino.”

Kaino slapped in a fresh drum as Bolan strode up to an SUV and fired.

The Dragon’s Tongue ammo sent a one-hundred-foot jet of flame playing over the vehicle. The effect lasted less than a second. Any exposed person in the path of the flame would be badly burned. Gangsters choking on tear gas screamed at the effect. The driver slammed his vehicle into Reverse and rammed the vehicle behind him. Bolan hosed down two more vehicles and sent tongues of fire into the lanes between the clusters of gangs. Gangsters ran in all directions.

Kaino’s mask smothered the sound of his laughter to the general public, but Bolan heard it loud and clear as the master sergeant sent out clouds of rubber buckshot at calf level and swept his former opponents from back in the day off their feet. Bolan reloaded and flamed another five vehicles.

The rout was total.

Rubber screamed on asphalt as smoking rides peeled to get out of the gas and flamethrower effect. Bolan took the loudspeaker out of his bag and connected it to the mike in his mask.

Bolan’s voice boomed like God on High. “I am El Hombre! The gas station is mine! Miami-Dade is mine! I’m coming for all of you!”

He watched with mild satisfaction as the remaining gangsters ran, limped or crawled out of the war zone.

CHAPTER TWO

Miami-Dade Safehouse

“Did you have fun?” Aaron Kurtzman asked.

Bolan glanced at the Miami Herald. The morning headline read Gang War Erupts! In a smaller font the side story talked about a “Disturbing new twist in the ongoing turf battles. Police tactics purported used in battle.” Bolan turned to Kaino. “Did you have fun?”

“Oh, big fun.” Kaino held his hands three feet apart. “Huge.”

“Yeah, I guess we had fun, Bear.”

“Speaking of fun.” Kaino glanced at the laptop he’d been issued. He was speaking to someone named Bear, but his video window was blank. Kaino was a trained investigator, and he could tell by facial cuts that the man across the table from him was looking at a face. Kaino spoke to the Bear. “Your man here told me he would prefer it if I didn’t contact my department unless it was an emergency or to request resources.”

“That would be preferable,” Kurtzman agreed. “What’s on your mind?”

“Last night was fun, but what’s my status now?”

“As of now you are on an open-ended, paid, consulting leave of absence.”

“Never heard of such a thing.”

Bolan held up his Justice Department Observation Liaison Officer badge. “Want one?”

“Nah, open-ended paid consulting leave is good. So what’s next?”

“That depends on you.”

“Me?” Kaino threw back his head and laughed. “Dude! You just kicked the Zetas’, Gulf Coast’s and MS-13’s asses all at the same time. You’re El Hombre! King of the street, and may I add proud new absentee owner of a gas station! Dude, I just walk in your shadow and I’m thankful for the slot.”

“Didn’t know you were a poet, Kaino.”

“Puerto Ricans,” Kaino acknowledged. “We’re poetic people. So what can I do for you, El Hombre?”

“We’ve been picking up some real strange chatter. That led us to the Miami-Dade area.”

“Chatter?” Kaino queried.

“Yeah.”

“Like intelligence communications and satellites and shit like that?”

“And shit like that,” Bolan confirmed.

Kaino shrugged. “Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“I thought you were here about cocodrilo.”

“Crocodile?” Bolan queried.

“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.”

“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.”