Devil's Mark. Don Pendleton

into one armored shoulder and clicked on empty. Both men simultaneously shoved Smiley to the floor and dropped to a knee. The action made both men’s pant legs ride up and expose the ankle holsters they wore. Bolan’s snub-nosed Centennial revolver rose up in his hand. Villaluz leveled a tiny, antique Colt .32. Bolan felt the wind whip of bullets passing close to his head as he and the inspector’s revolvers spit fire.

      The killer collapsed to the floor with his face cratered into a bloody moonscape.

      Smiley pushed herself up snarling. “God…damn it!”

      Bolan and Villaluz rose and swiftly reloaded. The Executioner eyed the inspector’s cocktail-sized hideaway weapon. “So how come they don’t call you Three Gun?”

      “Before tonight—” Villaluz let out a long shaky breath as he reloaded his menagerie of metal “—I have never had to pull the third one.”

      Bolan considered leaving. Sirens sounded in the distance. The Hospital Angeles fire suppression system finally made up its tiny silicon mind about the gun smoke in the air and recessed sprinkler heads deployed out of the ceiling and brought on the rain. The goat-screw trifecta was complete as a baker’s dozen of armed and soggy security guards roared through the surgery doors, guns drawn, telling everyone to get down a day late and a dollar short.

      CHAPTER THREE

      FIA Headquarters, Tijuana

      The shit storm of recrimination was long, enduring and heartfelt. La Agencia Federal de Investigación wasn’t happy and its collective, bureaucratic brain blindly pinned the tail on Mack Bolan as the donkey of its discontent. They threatened him with incarceration, litigation and deportation. Bolan weathered the storm. He had operated in Mexico before, and he had a few friends who owed him. Bolan called in markers, and the Tijuana FIA chief’s jaw dropped as Bolan handed him the phone saying, “He wants to talk to you.” It ended with stern warnings to behave himself in future. Bolan walked out of FIA Tijuana station a free man but all chances of further cooperation with local law were shot.

      Bolan was radioactive in Tijuana.

      The only people who would touch him would be the bad guys. Bolan walked out feeling a bit naked, as well. His Beretta 93-R machine pistol and his snub-nosed, 9 mm Smith had been confiscated. Both weapons were hard to come by, and both were probably about to become some cartel member’s prize possessions as soon as the FIA evidence people could process them, declare them destroyed, then sell them on the black market.

      Something was going to have to be done about that.

      Bolan had a full war load in the CIA safe house, but he didn’t want to go there until he was sure he didn’t have any tails, and he suspected he had a lot of them.

      Bree Smiley walked beside him, livid beneath her bruises and stitches. “Sons of bitches. See if the Mexicans ever get reciprocity again on my—”

      Bolan lifted his chin. “There’s our reciprocity right there.”

      “¡Hola, amigo, muchacha!” Inspector Villaluz leaned against a gleaming black Toyota Tundra pickup and tipped his hat at them. “How was your visit?”

      “We’re pretty much persona non grata,” Bolan said.

      “Ah, yes.” The inspector held open the door for Smiley. She climbed in the back. Villaluz gave Bolan a solicitous grin. “So, they…ripped you a new rectum?” He savored the American colloquialism.

      “They tried.”

      “To be honest I was quite surprised to see you both walk out of the agency without shackles or escorts.”

      “They forced me to make some phone calls,” Bolan admitted.

      “I cannot imagine what that might mean.”

      Bolan sized up Villaluz. Cop. Gunfighter. Corrupt, but brave, and honorable by his own lights. Bolan rolled the dice. “It means that card I gave you means something.”

      Villaluz looked meditative as he pulled out into traffic. “So how do you feel? Are you hungry?”

      Bolan patted the empty place where his Beretta should have been. “Actually, I’m feeling a little light.”

      “Ah.” Villaluz nodded. “I think I can do something about that.”

      “Lunch wouldn’t hurt either. Where do you recommend?”

      “Mexicali,” Villaluz answered.

      Bolan consulted his mental map. Mexicali was more than a hundred miles due east of Tijuana. “Why Mexicali?”

      “Why?” Villaluz smiled happily. “They have the best Chinese food in all of Mexico!”

      “And to see who follows us,” Bolan concluded.

      “That, too.”

      “And because I’m feeling light.”

      Villaluz shrugged.

      “You sure your superiors are going to approve?”

      “I am getting you out of Tijuana, and I am keeping an eye on you,” the inspector replied.

      “And reporting our every move?” Bolan surmised.

      “Well…” Villaluz pursed his lips judiciously. “As I believe the situation requires.”

      Bolan nodded. The inspector wanted the guys who had taken down Cuah Nigris, and he was willing to play both ends against the middle when it came to Bolan and his own superiors. They both knew Bolan and Smiley would be the fall guys if it went sour. It was a situation the soldier was willing to accept. “Fair enough.”

      Villaluz pulled onto Highway D2 heading east. It was Sunday, and most people were heading the other way for home. The brown landscape was lined with shrines. They were constructed out of tombstones, piles of bricks or adobe, and covered with collages of curled photos, dried-up postcards of the Virgin Mary, desiccated garlands of flowers and spent votive candles. They were shrines to the dead. Most Mexican roadsides were dotted with them, but here along the border they were mostly shrines to the murdered. Along the D2 they marched like dominoes to the horizon and were a testament to the endemic violence that convulsed the country.

      They made good time. Traffic wasn’t bad, and the inspector liked to drive fast. The only things that slowed them were the military and police checkpoints. Villaluz could have breezed through them on his FIA inspector’s badge but he stopped at each checkpoint and chatted up the men manning them. Bolan watched as the inspector pressed flesh and clapped shoulders. He seemed to know most of the uniforms by name, and all seemed eager to bask in the inspector’s reputation and machismo. Villaluz was dropping a net of lookouts and informants behind them on the road to Mexicali.

      Bolan eased his seat back. “He’s good.”

      “Mole worships the ground he walks on. Even the dirtiest cops do. The cartel street thugs respect him, and the cartel jefes in Tijuana have a hands-off policy. He doesn’t mess with them and they don’t mess with him.”

      “He’s messing with them now.”

      “He’s sticking his neck way out on this one, and that is uncharacteristic.” Smiley shook her head. “Cuah and the Barbacoa Four all going down while in custody has him riled up. As far as he’s concerned, someone has crossed the line, and now he’s going to cross it, as well.”

      “There’s going to be a war soon.”

      “Soon? Buddy, last night was World War III. I can’t wait to see what you consider a real war.”

      “Stick around.”

      Villaluz hopped back into his truck and peeled out with screaming tires to the cheers of the khaki-clad federales. Bolan brought up the million-dollar question. “You ever seen the cartels attack like that?”

      “I have seen them brazen, bold and reckless,” the inspector said.

      “You