Mission: Apocalypse. Don Pendleton

didn’t think she was faking.

      Amilcar laughed. “What’s the matter, baby? King Solomon isn’t here to protect you anymore? Guess you aren’t so tough after all. On your knees.”

      Dominico tensed, but Bolan put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Wait for it,” he whispered.

      Busto reached out with shaking hands and began to unbuckle Amilcar’s belt. Bolan stood up as Amilcar’s pants went down around his ankles, then stepped into the bedroom as Amilcar’s underwear followed. The drug enforcer had a split second to gape as the man in black appeared as if by magic. The Hammer might have been a professional boxer, but Bolan had literally caught him with his pants down. Amilcar should have put up his fists and shouted for his men, but instinct trumped his training. He made a strangled noise of shock and consternation and snatched for his pants.

      Bolan’s right hand sent Amilcar’s front teeth down his throat. Then he stepped forward and threw his cupped hand across the man’s face like a tennis forehand shot and slapped him onto his back. Bolan’s Beretta was in his hand and the machine pistol’s laser sight tracked between Amilcar’s legs.

      “Let’s talk quietly,” Bolan suggested.

      Amilcar drooled blood and teeth while he twitched in pain, shame and shock. He desperately wanted to pull up his pants. He desperately wanted to do anything but the laser beam painting his manhood kept him pinned in place like an insect. His hands were brutal weapons, but now they twitched at his sides like injured birds afraid to rise. Bolan didn’t use laser sights to aim very often but one nice feature they had going for them was that they scared the hell out of people.

      “Where did the material go?” Bolan asked.

      “What material? I—Hey!”

      Bolan knelt and screwed the muzzle of the Beretta’s sound suppressor beneath the Hammer’s scrotum. Varjo Amilcar’s genitalia immediately tried to retreat into his body. Bolan lifted his head and looked around the room in mock concern. “Is there a draft in here?”

      Amilcar started to sit up and found himself staring down the .50-caliber muzzle of the immense Desert Eagle pistol that had appeared in Bolan’s other hand. The soldier twitched the muzzle toward the floor and Amilcar flopped back with a noise that presaged crying. Amilcar was a genuine tough guy, and he could have undoubtedly stood up to a great deal of physical torture in the same fashion that he had taken poundings in the ring; but Mexico was a macho culture and Bolan had usurped the Hammer’s machismo in the worst way possible.

      Bolan’s face was a mask of stone. “I’m not going to kill you, Hammer, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know they’re going to start calling you El Buey.”

      Buey was Spanish for bullock or castrated bull.

      Busto had risen from the bed. Her cheeks were turning purple and inflating like balloons. Her slitted eyes gleamed with palpable hatred out of the swelling. She reached into her left boot and pulled out a straight razor that Amilcar had not detected. “Let me do it.”

      “Watch the door,” Bolan ordered.

      Busto drew on her boots, scooped up her pistol and cracked the bedroom door to watch the hall.

      Bolan decided to go with some simpler warm-up questions. “Who gave you your orders?”

      “It was King Solomon!” Amilcar squeaked.

      “King Solomon sent you the material?”

      Amilcar grabbed for it like a lifeline. “Sí! I mean, yes!”

      “He gave you orders in person?”

      “Yes!”

      “He gave you his routes?”

      “His routes! His contacts! Everything! He called the shots!”

      Bolan raised a questioning eyebrow. “Are you willing to testify against him?”

      “King Solomon is a whore! He gave orders like he really thinks he’s king and then sat back in Mexico City while we did all the work! You get him? I’ll testify against him!”

      Bolan let out a long breath. “You hear that, Memo? El Martillo is prepared to testify against you.”

      Guillermo Dominico stalked into the room from the balcony as if he were entering a wrestling ring. His head was lowered and his hands curled into claws by his sides. “Let him talk.”

      “Oh, shit…oh, shit…oh, shit…” Amilcar muttered it under his breath like it was his mantra.

      Bolan rose. “I’m not a torturer. It’s not what I do. But you’re lying to me, and Mexican citizens are dying as we speak. Soon United States citizens will be dying, and I think you know something about it. So it’s like this. I’m going to leave you here with Memo and Najelli. I’m going to step out into the hall and kill anyone who tries to come up while you testify. You know Memo well, Varjo. From back in the day. You know the judgment of Solomon, and you know what he does to those who lie and inform on him.”

      Amilcar knew full well that back in the day they’d have their tongues torn out.

      Bolan stared down at Amilcar’s shriveled sack. “I think you can guess what he’ll do to a man who messed with a woman under his protection.”

      Amilcar made a mewling noise.

      “Your choice, Varjo.” Bolan holstered his pistols. “Pull up your pants and talk to me, or testify as God made you in King Solomon’s court.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Varjo Amilcar spilled everything and Bolan recorded it. Names, routes, contacts—everything. Dominico grew increasingly agitated as Amilcar gave up the entire King Solomon machine from Sinaloa to Baja. It was Dominico’s former machine, but he had taken pains to protect the people he had left behind when he had turned over his new leaf. He thought he had buried his past. Someone had handed Amilcar King Solomon’s criminal gold mine, and Amilcar had gleefully dug up everything and everyone. Many of Dominico’s old accomplices had been forced back to work, sold out or killed. Dominico’s voice dropped to an ugly hiss. “How the fuck did you get all this!”

      Amilcar cringed.

      Dominico beseeched the ceiling. “How the fuck did I forget to bring tongs!”

      Bolan’s blue eyes burned down upon Amilcar and they were pitiless. “The man asked you a question. Make him ask again and I take that walk.”

      Amilcar babbled. “I…I…I…”

      Busto whispered urgently. “Someone’s coming!”

      Bolan raised his pistols. “How many?”

      “Two!”

      Bolan rose from Amilcar’s side. “Memo, watch him.”

      Amilcar suddenly shrieked. “Rudi! Tucho! Aquí! Aquí—!”

      Dominico drove the steel strut of the Uzi’s folding stock between Amilcar’s eyes. The drug dealer flopped to the floor like he’d been shot. Dominico smiled happily at Bolan.

      “You’re right! The stock! It works!”

      Busto slammed the door shut. “Here they come!”

      Bolan wasn’t in the mood for a blind exchange of fire through the door with Busto and an intelligence asset in the room. Fists pounded on the door and the men outside were shouting. “Varjo! Varjo!”

      Bolan charged the door. Busto’s eyes flew wide. “What are you—!” Busto shrieked and threw herself aside as Bolan hit the door like a fullback going up the middle. The door shattered off its hinges and Rudi and Tucho were smashed back with it. Bolan hurdled the fallen men and spun about, pistols in hand. Tucho had taken the brunt of the blow and was flat on his back. Rudi popped back up with a revolver in his hand. Bolan leveled the front sight of the Desert Eagle on Rudi’s chest and fired. The report of the