State Of War. Don Pendleton

no one respects how you roll more than me.”

      “Glad to hear that.”

      “But sooner or later this ‘biggest dick on the block’ routine of yours is going to get us in some real trouble.”

      “Well, all right, then. Wait until I’ve breached the door.”

      “Your funeral.”

      “Not if you can help it, Kaino.”

      “Here we go again...”

      Bolan took the baseball out of the box he had received by courier and slid out of the car. He set the modified Pittsburg Pirates cap on his head and walked across the street toward Salami’s fortress of narcatude. He wore earth sandals, cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. By his own admission Bolan looked like a total rube. The gangbanger watching the door was built like a sumo wrestler. His tracksuit was blinding white and he had an Army Ranger high and tight haircut. Zeta tattoos covered his throat. Bolan walked up and gave the door guard a happy wave. “Howdy!”

      “Basta, gringo.”

      Bolan tilted his head like a dog hearing a sound it didn’t recognize. “What?”

      The doorman gave Bolan a pitying look. “Fuck off.”

      Bolan stared at the door guard like he might start crying. “But...I...”

      “Madre de Dios...” The gangbanger rolled his eyes. “Fuck off.”

      Bolan dropped to one knee and drove his fist three inches below the gangbanger’s belt line.

      The fat man slowly sagged as his bladder hemorrhaged. “Oh, God...”

      Bolan’s uppercut ripped the guard into unconsciousness. The soldier took out his Beretta 93-R. He gave the security camera the middle finger and then gave it a 3-round burst. The security camera burst apart. Bolan took a moment to take an indelible marker out of his pocket and wrote “El Hombre” on the fatman’s forehead.

      Kaino shouted in Bolan’s earpiece. “You sick fuck!”

      “Bank on it, Kaino.”

      Dim sounds of consternation occurred behind the security door. Bolan pushed a thumbnail-size lozenge of plastic explosive into the lock and jammed a detonator pin into the mix. He took out his phone and hit an app.

      “Fire in the hole!” Bolan pressed the icon and a fat chunk of fire left the doorknob in ruins. He pulled the pin on a grenade. “Any time, Kaino.”

      Bolan kicked the door. Rage-faced gangbangers pulling guns confronted him. Rage turned to horror as the grenade clattered to the floor at their feet. The soldier waved and stepped back outside around the doorway. The sting-ball grenade detonated to the screams of the blunt-trauma beaten. He pulled the pin on a flash-bang and tossed it in. The foyer flashed with several thousand candlepowers of light and an Olympian thunder crack of sound.

      Bolan stepped inside.

      The sensory overloaded gangbangers were barely aware as Bolan put the mark of El Hombre on their foreheads. Kaino charged in with guns drawn and took in the scene. “You fascinate me.”

      Bolan moved toward the stairs. The charging Zeta thugs had been stupid enough to leave the steel security gate to the stair open behind them. Bolan shouted up the stairs. “Yo! Ham-slice! Let’s talk!”

      A torrent of Spanish insults echoed down the stairs. Bolan lobbed a sting-ball grenade up to the second-story landing. He stepped back as the cloud of rubber buckshot partially expanded back down the stairs. Bolan followed it with a flash-bang and the stairwell turned into the Norse god Thor’s personal thunder tunnel. “On my six, Kaino.”

      Bolan took the steps three at a time.

      A gunman crawled across the floor, blind and stunned, with his AK abandoned. Bolan gave him a lash across the left kidney with the slide of his Beretta to keep him honest and moved toward Salami’s inner sanctum. Kaino reached the second floor and kept his weapons trained behind them.

      “Kaino,” Bolan called. “Give me a quick sweep.”

      Kaino swept the stripped offices. “Empty!” He gave the steel door at the end of the hall a significant look. “They’ve gone all safety room on us. Probably calling in reinforcements.”

      Bolan concurred and walked up to the steel door.

      “What are you going to do?”

      Bolan dramatically pulled out a short cylinder of flexible charge and made a fist. He put the cylinder between his middle and ring fingers and held it up to the security camera like a high explosive middle finger.

      “Here we go...” Kaino muttered.

      Bolan gave the hapless video device a 3-round burst from the Beretta, pressed the adhesive side of the explosive against the door lock and stuck in the detonator pin. “Fire in the hole.”

      Bolan pressed the app on his phone and flexible charge cut a blackened crescent around the lock. The crack of the HE died as the soldier came to a decision. “Kaino, I need Salami alive. I’m going to try to take him. If it all goes to shit, you do what you have to do.”

      Kaino gave Bolan a hard look. “All right.”

      The soldier ejected his magazine of hollowpoint bullets and slapped in twenty-one rounds of less lethal ammo. In Bolan’s experience rubber bullets had a pretty dismal track record unless they came in shotgun slug sizes or buckshot-size swarms. At 21 grains, the 9 mms Bolan was loading were basically like hitting someone with a Gummi bear that had been on the shelf a few months too long. Of course they were coming in at 800 feet per second and the Beretta 93-R did have the advantage of pumping them out in 3-round bursts.

      Bolan kicked the door and stepped aside.

      A double-barrel went off like dynamite and two ARs burned their magazines in seconds and pinged open on empty.

      The soldier stepped in.

      A Zeta gangbanger screamed and charged, wielding his spent rifle by the barrel like a club. Bolan gave him three bursts from the Beretta and dropped him clutching his ribs. Another gangbanger stared stupidly with his sawed-off shotgun broken open, trying to pluck out the smoking shells. Two bursts or rubber bullets below the belt buckle left the gangster sagging and wetting himself.

      Kaino came through the door.

      Salami literally cartwheeled at Bolan, who put a burst into his ribs. Salami’s foot scythed the Beretta out of Bolan’s hands. The soldier ducked the ensuing heel kick by a hair and backpedaled.

      It had been a long time since someone had tried to kick a gun out of Bolan’s hand, and the last would-be Bruce Lee who had tried it had received lead for his trouble. Salami grinned and slowly began to dance from side to side to Brazilian rhythms only he could hear. By the size of the man’s pupils Bolan suspected Salami was drugged up and feeling no pain. “How do you like that, ese?”

      He shot a smug grin at the cop. “Hey, Kaino! How’s your chin?”

      Kaino cocked his revolvers.

      Salami howled in most likely meth-fueled glee. “Gonna do your little gringo friend like I did you, Kaino! Except worse!”

      “Yo! Hombre!” Kaino leveled his weapons. “Let me grease this Falkland Island craving little prick once and for all!”

      Salami shrieked in nationalistic outrage. “That’s the Islas Malvinas!”

      Bolan watched Salami’s feet. “We came here to talk.”

      Salami turned purple as he danced. “Talk? Fuck talk! Go ahead! Go for your second gun! You watch what happens! You want a talk with me, you gotta earn it! Show me something, puto!”

      Bolan held up his hands in peace. “I told you I came to talk.”

      “¡Maricón!” Salami spun into another blur and his