State Of War. Don Pendleton

He was snarling and had to have whipped his head. Bolan stared long and hard at the crystal-clear picture of the weapon in his hand and spitting brass in what looked to be a very posh living room. “SIG SG 551 short assault rifle. Swiss.”

      Savacool glanced at her file on the desk. “Wow...you are good.”

      “It’s an awfully swanky piece,” Bolan admitted. “Where was the picture taken?”

      “In Mexico, during the assassination of Christo Bruno.”

      Bolan searched his mental files. “He was Gulf Coast, wasn’t he?”

      “Bruno was actually the head of the Gulf Coast’s armed, or La Resistencia wing. The attack on his hacienda in Matamoros last year was positively surgical. He had a heavy security presence on the premises and they along with Bruno and every other person present, including women and children and the hired help were gunned down. The forensic evidence the federales shared with us imply that the attackers took no losses. In fact the Mexican State police in Tamaulipas did a lot of angry muttering about suspecting it was Navy SEALs or Delta Force.”

      Kaino leaned back in his chair. “If Bruno had his place wired, how come only one pic?”

      Bolan eyed the shooter up on the screen. “The attackers knew where the security cameras were. The shooter must have been forced past that camera during the firefight, or he hadn’t knocked it out yet.” Bolan turned to Savacool. “I gather the house was stripped of security?”

      “All the security systems were destroyed. Bruno reached his safe room, but they breached it with explosives and gutted its security suite. We have this pic because Bruno’s security system had a wireless backup and transmitted to an outside data storage facility.”

      “There was nothing from any of the other cameras?”

      “Oh, there was plenty. Pictures of the grounds and perimeter. All show everything right as rain until they suddenly start going dead. The outside cameras were taken out with precision rifle fire.”

      “The attackers didn’t leave anything behind at all?” Kaino asked.

      “The only things they left behind were bullets and bodies. They even took the time to clean up their spent brass.”

      “I’m going to need everything you have on this Bruno character and what he was up to for the year before his killing.”

      Savacool held out a blue flash drive with the FBI logo on it. “I figured you might say that. It also has contact information for Mexican officials pertinent to the investigation. The drive also contains everything Forensics has so far on your boys down in the morgue.”

      “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

      “So what are you going to do now, Mr. Cooper?”

      “Oh, I don’t know, just be myself.”

      Kaino snorted in amusement.

      Savacool was not amused. “You know you can’t just run around pulling a Terminator in the streets of Miami.”

      Bolan shrugged. “I needed a few ass-kickings to start busting things open.”

      “You do realize, Mr. Cooper, that the FBI doesn’t usually think in terms of ass-kickings to bust things open?”

      “Yeah, but admit it, you wish they did.”

      “Mr. Cooper, from what I’ve read, I will freely admit that it would be more fun than a barrel of monkeys to roll with you, throwing local, state and federal law out the window and laying down the hurt on the bad guys.” She shot Kaino a look. “And apparently armed with a ‘get out of jail free’ card issued from God on High to boot. But you have to understand, you—”

      Bolan made his decision. “You want to?”

      Savacool’s face went uncharacteristically blank. “Do I want to what?”

      “Would you like to roll with me, Special Agent Savacool?”

      “You have got to be kidding.”

      “I can arrange it—” Bolan snapped his fingers “—like that.”

      “I’m on an open-ended, paid, consulting leave of absence,” Kaino confirmed. “It’s been pretty educational.”

      Savacool just stared.

      “Sophie,” Bolan asked, “do you speak Spanish?”

      “Spanish, French, Russian and I’m currently taking courses in Arabic at the Miami University Middletown campus.”

      “Oh, she’s good.” Kaino nodded happily. “Dude, we totally want her on the team. Sophie, you want to join the home team?”

      “The winning team?” Bolan added.

      “I...” Savacool was literally at a loss for words. “I’d have to take that up with my superiors.”

      Bolan took out a blank business card and wrote two phone numbers on it. “You can direct any questions you may have to the top number.”

      Savacool took the card. She was FBI and she knew the Washington, D.C., 202 area code on the first one like an old friend. “And the bottom one?”

      “You can call me anytime.”

      Savacool nodded, then she stood and left the conference room.

      Kaino nodded judiciously. “She likes you.”

      Bolan took the flash drive and plugged it into his phone. “Who doesn’t?”

      “Salami?” Kaino suggested.

      “He just doesn’t know me well enough yet.” Bolan’s phone peeped at him. The Farm’s own cybernetic wunderkind, Akira Tokaido, had developed the phone’s security suite personally, and Tokaido’s security applications examined the flash drive for bugs, malware or any kind of FBI shenanigans and proclaimed the files were clean. Bolan hit Send and the info went straight to Kurtzman back in the Computer Room in Virginia. “Let’s go.”

      Kaino fell into formation with Bolan. They were a pair of large and dangerous-looking men, and FBI personnel unconsciously moved to get out of their way.

      Kaino sighed as they reached the foyer and his FBI adventure came to a close. “You think Savacool will join the winning team?”

      “Definitely.”

      The Miami afternoon heat hit them like a wall as they stepped out of the FBI office and crossed the parking lot. “What now?” Kaino asked.

      “I have people processing the information Agent Savacool gave us. They’ll contact me when they have anything useful.” Bolan glanced up at the sun and knew it was about noon. “You know a good place to eat?”

      “I know a place in Little San Juan that makes goat stew like murder, man.”

      “On me.”

      “Cool.”

      They stopped in front of Bolan’s ride. The shiny black Signature L Lincoln Town Car had been violated. Bolan took in the almost childlike graffito of a crocodile painted in electric-pink spray paint across his hood. Kaino spit in disgust. Some genuine dread crept into his voice. “I told you he’d be coming for you.”

      The noontime, midsummer Miami air was brutally hot, heavy and still. Bolan sniffed it. “You smell that?”

      Kaino’s nose wrinkled and his face made a fist of disgust. “Yeah, I smell it, and I told you! Didn’t I?”

      Bolan slowly nodded. “You did.” Bolan tasted the turgid, humid air again—the two entwined scents were unmistakable. One was the acrid, burned metal by way of nail-polish remover smell of iodine.

      The other was the stench of rotting flesh.

      Bolan punched in Savacool’s business card number from memory. She answered on the first ring,