State Of War. Don Pendleton

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