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“I need it by tonight.”
Salami nearly strangled on his wine. “And what are you going to do with all this shit?”
“I’m going to give El Hombre something that will haunt his dreams, even if he survives it.”
“And how are you going to find him again?”
“There’s something in the paint I tagged his car with. Something that satellites can see and people can’t.”
Salami stared at the rotting killer on his couch. “You have a satellite watching El Hombre?”
Delilah smiled and spoke for the first time.
“No, but someone else who wants him dead does.”
West Miami
T HE KEY WAS UNDER the gnome.
Special Agent Savacool could cook. Kaino happily held out his plate for a second chicken-fried steak. “You know, I really like breakfast for dinner.”
“Most men do,” Savacool agreed. She seemed to appreciate men with hearty appetites. Her great-aunt’s abode was a solid, brick house of Shaker-style built in the housing boom after World War II. Savacool had kept with the clean simple lines of the builder but added all modern appurtenances. The river was close by. A pleasing breeze blew off it and Savacool had opened up the house to receive it. The houses on the winding lane were few and far apart, and none had fences. The streetlights were few, ancient and dim. Spanish moss hung from the huge live oaks in swaths of Southern Gothic glory.
Savacool smiled as Bolan finished his meal. “You like fried steak?”
“Haven’t had one since the last time I was in Argentina.”
Savacool cocked her head. “How do they do it?”
“Well, there’s no gravy or biscuits. They fry it in oil and squeeze lemons on it. Usually have French fries on the side.”
Savacool made a noise. “Savages.”
“They’ll put fried eggs on top if you ask.”
“Well, at least that’s progress.”
Kaino suddenly snapped his head up. “You smell that?”
Bolan snuffed the air. “What?”
Savacool’s face contracted in disgust. “Oh, yeah, I was in New York in 2010 for the blooming of the corpse flower. It just about knocked me off my feet. Nice nose, Kaino.”
“I’m a gourmet and a gourmand, man. My nose takes me where I need to go.” Kaino pulled one of his .357s.
Bolan caught the sent of rotting mammal on the breeze and what lay beneath it. He rose and pulled his Beretta. “Iodine. Cocosino is here.”
Kaino took out his second .357. “Go for the head. Nothing else will stop him.”
“No.” It sickened Bolan to say it, but Cocosino was one of their few active leads. “Take his legs off if you can. I want him alive, and if he really is a krokodil addict, twenty-four hours without a fix will leave him willing to tell us anything we want to know.”
Savacool pulled her .40-caliber FBI-issue Glock and checked the load by reflex. “Hardcore, Cooper.”
Bolan took in the architecture. “Fuse box in the basement?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s kill the lights before he does and call 9-1-1.” Bolan sniffed the air again. The stench was becoming more powerful. It was unfortunate that all the windows and doors were open. “Be careful coming back up. If he’s close enough to smell, he’ll be in the house in moments.”
Savacool ran at a crouch to kill the lights. Bolan and Kaino stayed low and reached into their gear bags.
Kaino sniffed the air and nearly gagged. “Jesus, it smells like a dead wildebeest rotting on the savannah!”
“Didn’t know you were a poet, Kaino.”
“Yeah, well, you know.” Kaino pulled his NVG on top of his head and nearly gagged again.
Bolan had been exposed to dead bodies that ranged from fresh to mummified and every shade in between. It had long ago lost any power over his nose or his stomach. But Kaino was right. The stench was so strong it was almost anomalous.
The lights cut out. Bolan and Kaino pulled down their NVGs. A second later the agent’s voice spoke softly at the top of the stairs. “Savacool.”
“Clear.”
Savacool crouched beside the kitchen island cradling an M-4 carbine.
Bolan tapped an icon on his phone. “Bear, I need satellite on my position, stat.”
“I thought you’d gone dark on the Savacool family estate?”
“Stat, Bear.”
“One second. Checking available satellites. Have one with window. Nonessential shore surveillance. Assuming priority...now.” Kurtzman’s voice rose in instant alarm. “Striker! Be advised! You are surrounded!”
“Show me.” Bolan’s screen filled with an overhead thermal image of Great-Aunt Savacool’s manse. It was surrounded by what looked like between thirty and forty individuals. They formed an arc, cutting off the house from the road. The river behind blocked any escape out the back.
Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “Show me my car.”
The satellite zoomed on the hood of the Town Car. Cocosino’s crocodile graffito glowed like a neon sign. Kaino glowered beneath his goggles. “Jesus, when Cocosino tagged your car, Coop, he really tagged your car.”
Savacool risked a peek over the kitchen island and out the window. She didn’t have any NVGs, but it was a clear night. The ancient and poorly dispersed streetlights threw small islands of yellow light. The huge, spreading live oaks threw pools of blackness. She popped down grimacing in the dark of the kitchen. “It’s like Night of the Living Dead out there.”
Bolan rose and took a quick look. In his NVGs the world was lit in green and gray. Savacool wasn’t far off the mark. Dozens of figures were literally shambling toward the house. However, the walking dead didn’t usually carry bats, knives and other improvised hand weapons. They also didn’t usually have a universal uniform of a black hoodie.
Even for Bolan the smell was starting to become overpowering.
Savacool clicked off the safety on her carbine.
Bolan shook his head. “No.”
Savacool was appalled. “No? What do you mean, no?”
“They’re junkies.”
Kaino quietly exploded. “So fucking what? I’m with Cool! We cut our way to the car and—”
Glass shattered outside and fire spread across the hood of Bolan’s ride.
“Oh, that’s just grand!” Kaino snarled.
Bolan read his opponent’s mind. “He wants us to start shooting.”
“I want to start shooting!”
“These people are krokodil junkies. I suspect he gave them all a nice fat fix hours ago and bused them in while they were flying high. Now they’re coming down and they’re hurting for it, and the price of free fixes for life is our heads.”
Savacool’s voice was quiet but firm. “Cooper, that is the sickest thing I have ever heard, and I feel for those poor souls outside, but I am not going to be dragged down and torn apart by rotting junkies.”
Another Molotov looped through the air. It fell just short of the porch and broke on the flagstones.
Kaino spoke through clenched teeth. “Coop, they’re going to burn us out!”
“Cocosino wants a massacre, and while it’s going on he’s waiting to take his shot.”
Savacool gave Bolan a desperate plan. “Tell me you have a plan.”
“I do.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going out there.”
The FBI agent and the Miami-Dade master sergeant spoke in unison. “What the fuck!”
“Cool, you’re going onto the porch with your rifle. Cocosino is camouflaged, just another skell in an army of them. When he takes his shot at me, you take him down. Kaino, you’re going to defend the porch. I suspect some of these guys are going to get past me.”
“And if I’m not allowed to shoot, how am I supposed to do that?”
“Unless someone shoots at you, you’re doing it with your fists.”
“Jesus!”
“We’re out of time.” Bolan shrugged into his vest. He wished he had a full raid suit of rip stop material gloves and a helmet. He belted his Beretta to his thigh and cinched the retaining strap so it couldn’t be taken from him in a clinch. “Let’s go.”
Bolan strode out the front door and marched down the steps.
One of the junkies in the oncoming crowd screamed. “Get him!” He let loose with a tee-ball. The hate stick revolved through the air. Bolan turned his body slightly to avoid it and marched straight up to the hater. Up close the soldier saw sunken eyes and cheeks. He sent his fist crashing into the emaciated face. The junkie flew back five feet and fell like a broken scarecrow. Several junkies moaned. Others clutched themselves more tightly than their weapons. Many were already shivering from withdrawal. Bolan cracked his knuckles and regarded the crowd by the light of his burning Lincoln. “Who’s next?”
Fear rippled through the swaying crowd and fought addiction on nearly equal terms.
“Kill him!” a woman in the crowd shrieked like a harpy. “Kill him and we get all we want!”
The cry was like the crack of a whip. Addiction won the battle. The junkies released their individual fears and gave themselves over to their need. “Kill him!”
The crowd surged.
“Get out of there!” Kaino roared.
Bolan waded in. His fists became battering rams, his fingertips spears and the edges of his hands blunt axes. The soldier went for disabling strikes. He kept his kicks low so he couldn’t be taken off his feet, breaking clavicles and jaws. When he threw a kick, a junkie lost a knee or an ankle. Bolan didn’t whirl like a dervish. He moved through the crowd like a juggernaut. The attackers were weak, malnourished and, by the smell, carrying soon-to-be lethally infected wounds. They had two advantages, and those were numbers and abject desperation that had turned into bloodlust.
A rock thudded into Bolan’s left shoulder. A bandaged hand missing a finger clawed across the lenses of Bolan’s NVGs and left a swathe of rotting infection across them. Bolan grabbed the stick-thin wrist and shattered the elbow behind it. He ripped the half pound of contaminated gear from his head and threw it into a screaming face.
“Kill him! Kill him!”
Bolan felt his gorge rise, and not just from the stench of rotting flesh. This might well have been the worst attack anyone ever had ever perpetrated on him. Cocosino had recruited an army of rotting junkies willing to kill and burn for one more fix and bused them into West Miami. Given what Bolan knew about krokodil addiction, killing them might have been a kindness.
A .44 Magnum gun went off like a bomb in the crowd, and Bolan staggered as he took a sledgehammer blow low in his left floating ribs.
“Kill him!”
“Cooper!”
An emaciated arm wrapped around Bolan’s throat and squeezed with chemically fueled strength. The krokodil zombies were only a few steps away from the living dead. They could hardly feel pain beyond the agony of their addiction, but they still had to breathe. Bolan rammed his elbow into his assailant’s guts. Fetid breath blasted out of degraded lungs. The grip around Bolan’s neck loosened and he took a step forward to give himself room. He swung again backward, and this time snapped his arm straight. The Executioner’s fist slammed up into his assailant’s groin. It was the one place where no drug could make a man invulnerable. The croc-zombie slimed off Bolan’s back vomiting. The soldier suddenly had a few feet of breathing room.
A figure indistinguishable from the other ghouls raised a gleaming stainless-steel revolver. The .44 Magnum gun went off like a cannon and hit Bolan in the chest like a thunderbolt. A junkie ghoul-girl stepped in the way, and Cocosino’s second shot blew through her body and hit Bolan a second time right over the solar plexus.
Savacool’s rifle fired three times rapidly in return and tore dirt where Cocosino had been standing. She screamed over the sound. “Cooper! Cooper!” The creatures of the chemical apocalypse responded with everything from shrieks to moans, but all said the same thing.
“Kill him! Kill him!”
Bolan staggered. He couldn’t tell if his armor had held and couldn’t get any air into his lungs. Three junkies converged on him, and Bolan’s limbs responded too slowly to stop them. The iodine and death stench was overpowering as they swarmed him. Another arm snaked around Bolan’s neck. A ten-inch boning knife chopped into the degraded armor covering Bolan’s chest. A fist crashed into his jaw. Bolan shot out his hand and seized the throat of the knife-wielder. With her hood fallen back, she was little more than a halo of wild hair and stark bones. The soldier’s fingers sank into the suppurating wounds where she had been injecting into her neck. Two more croc-zombies hit the pile of horror, and Bolan found himself in a rugby scrum of the living waiting to be dead.
A girl grabbed his arm in spindly hands. A palpable cloud of corruption exhaled out of the dying junkie’s mouth and broken and rotting teeth sank into Bolan’s biceps. Another set of teeth sank into his thigh. The knife chopped into the soldier’s chest again, and this time he felt the cold burn as it slid home and the hideous grating on bone as it jammed between his ribs. Another fist hit him in the face and more hands grabbed at his legs.
The paean of dead junkies walking was almost a moan of benediction.
“Kill him! Kill him!”
The knife ripped free from Bolan’s ribs and the skeletal, witch-thing wielding it pulled back for another stab. A small revolver popped from one side, and Bolan took three more in the chest. He dropped to one knee as a starving, rotting junkie chop-blocked him in the back of his legs. Bolan felt tooth stumps scrape against the back of his neck as suppurating limbs smothered him.
The ghouls were dragging him down.
Bolan roared like the apex predator he was and erupted upward.
The knife-wielder shrieked and took her blade overhead in both hands for the kill shot. Bolan snapped his head forward in a butt. The junkie would most likely not even register a smashed septum or cracked cheekbone. Bolan went skull to skull. Purple pinpricks danced around his vision, but his would-be butcher dropped like a bullock in the slaughter shoot.
The Executioner risked multiple concussions and snapped his head backward into the face of a junkie biting at his nape. He felt a jaw break and that gave him just enough room to rip his arm free from the ghoul eating his biceps. He gave the withered, rotting girl an elbow that sent teeth flying and eyes rolling. The addict chewing on his leg took a knife hand to the temple and went boneless. The chop-blocker was still on hands and knees, and Bolan drove his heel into the top of the addict’s right hand and shattered it.
A Goth-looking junkie screamed and shoved his revolver forward. “Die! Why don’t you die?”
