State Of War. Don Pendleton

heel scythed for Bolan’s temple. The soldier snatched off his cap by the bill and slapped it into the oncoming foot. Salami screamed as his talus bone cracked. His spinning kick turned into a spinout and he hit the floor in an ugly pinwheel of limbs. He screamed again as Bolan whipped his hat against his elbow.

      Kaino stared in wonderment. “What the fuck?”

      Bolan tossed Kaino his Pirates cap. Kaino caught it on the muzzle of his left-hand gun. He fondled the cap with his right trigger finger and stopped as he found the packet of impact material sewn high inside the brow. “What the hell?”

      “Slap cap.”

      Kaino grinned from ear to ear. “Oh, I gotta have one! Tell me they make these in Miami Heat!”

      Bolan kept his eyes on the crying, cracked-ankle-hugging Salami on the floor and recovered his Beretta. “That can be arranged.”

      Kaino sailed the cap back at Bolan. “Sweet!”

      Bolan caught it and sat on his heels beside the gangbanger. “So, Baloney? Braunschweiger? Headcheese? What was your processed meat name again?”

      “Fuck you!”

      Bolan cocked back the cap in his hand.

      “No more hat!”

      “How much hat you receive is up to you, Summer Sausage.”

      “I want my lawyer...” Salami mewled.

      “No lawyers here. Just you, me, Kaino and God.”

      “Oh, God...”

      “And God’s busy. So he sent me,” Bolan said.

      “Who are you!”

      “You tell me.”

      Salami gulped, shuddered and went from pale to green with the telltale nausea of broken bones.

      “Don’t you puke on my shoes,” Bolan warned. “Now, who am I?”

      “You’re El Hombre...” Salami whispered.

      “That’s right. So I have one question for you. Who’s supplying you with codeine?”

      Salami blinked. “What?”

      “Cocodrilo’s main ingredient is codeine. Codeine is a controlled substance that requires a physician’s prescription to obtain and a pharmaceutical lab to manufacture. Cocodrilo needs codeine in bulk for production. Tell me who’s supplying it and I’ll leave you alone.”

      “I don’t know!”

      “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Bolan asked.

      “I mean I don’t know!”

      Bolan packed the brim of his cap into his palm several times for emphasis. “Last chance, Lunch Meat.”

      “No one! I mean I don’t know!”

      “You don’t cook it?” Bolan asked.

      “No way, man!”

      Bolan frowned.

      “Man, only the junkies cook it! And they’re ripping off drugstores and burglarizing their grandma’s medicine cabinets and shit! We get it prepackaged!”

      Bolan regarded the hobbled, panic-attacking drug dealer at his feet for long moments.

      Kaino waved his revolvers. “You believe this shit?”

      “Do you?”

      “Well, that is the thing,” Kaino admitted. “The labs we’ve found aren’t set up for distribution. Just junkies cooking themselves to death and anyone who can pay. There’s too much product and not enough producers. Give him the hat again. Just to verify.”

      Salami shrieked and clutched his ankle and elbow. “No more hat!”

      “All right, then one last question.” Bolan leaned in close. “Who distributes to you?”

      Salami shuddered. “Oh, God...”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Safehouse

      “So it’s a shell game.” Kaino bit off half a Cuban sandwich of his own making and chewed meditatively. “And the game is where’s the codeine at.”

      Bolan also ate a sandwich, and cleaned his Beretta on the kitchen table. Rubber bullets made for interesting bore cleaning. “That seems to be the size of it. I just can’t see any underground local manufacturer.”

      “What about a mainstream manufacturer?” Kaino suggested. “Keeping double books and diverting the goods to the streets.”

      “I have people on that angle, but it’s not my first guess.”

      “You think the Russians are smuggling it in?”

      Bolan had been giving that a lot of thought. “Hard to imagine the Russian mafia smuggling codeine across the Atlantic just so local croc-heads can cook it at pocket change prices. Hard to see the profit margin being worth it, much less the logistics of the endeavor.”

      “You think it’s someplace a lot closer to home.”

      “Whoever is doing this is doing it through the Latino gangs in Florida. That’s our connection until something better pops up. We pound them until something breaks open.”

      “Listen, man, I do admire your style.”

      “Thanks. But?”

      “I mean, I love hammering the bad guys with the semiauto Pez dispensers.”

      “Who doesn’t?”

      Kaino laughed. “Yeah, but all the pencil erasers at hostile velocity, flash-bangs and tear gas in the world aren’t going to break this organization. This can’t last. We’re about to take it up to distributor level. Man, I just don’t how much longer your less-than-lethal approach is going to work.”

      “I agree. We keep playing it like this, the bad guys are going to start thinking we get squeamish at the sight of blood. Assuming his people haven’t already beheaded him, Salami is most likely going to snort himself a sinus load of chemical courage, lose his fear of the hat and want some payback.”

      “And, so?”

      “The fact is, Kaino, we’re going to be drenched in blood and bodies before this one is over. Like up to our eyeballs. What do you say?”

      “Well, since you ask, I say let’s kick this pig and when it’s over the Pink Champale is on you.”

      “Pink Champale?”

      “What’s the matter, El Hombre, you afraid to see how the other half lives?”

      Bolan had drunk everything from cobra venom sacs swimming in cognac in an opium den in Vietnam to fermented mare’s milk in a yurt in Mongolia. He was afraid that Pink Champale might just test him. “Done.”

      “Well, now we’re cooking with gas!”

      “Any other concerns?”

      “Well, you’re El Hombre, international ass-kicker of mystery, and you might as well have dropped in from Mars. I suspect you’ll drop off the planet again with equal facility. But me? Everybody knows me, and everybody knows where I live. You know what I’m saying?”

      Bolan nodded. “You’re worried about your family.”

      “Yeah, I am.”

      “Maybe you should call them.”

      Kaino frowned. “Yeah, maybe I should.” He took out his cell and punched a preset number. A smile broke out across his face at the sound of his wife’s voice. “Che, mi amor. How are you and the kids?” The master sergeant’s face slowly went blank as his wife spoke to him. “You’re on a plane?” Kaino listened