Don Pendleton - State Of War

“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 areas of expertise.”

Bolan sat in Kaino’s unmarked car and watched the back door of Papi’s Tea Room through binoculars. “It’s one of mine.”

“You’ve been staring at that door for five minutes.” Kaino regarded Bolan dryly. “Has it done anything yet?”

“No, but it’s not happy.”

“The door isn’t happy?” Kaino queried.

“No.”

“It’s not a happy door.”

“No, someone violated it,” Bolan said.

“It’s a violated, unhappy door?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“Look closer.”

Kaino squinted into his binoculars. “Well, it is a filthy door covered with graffiti.”

“Look at the hinges and the knob,” Bolan suggested.

Kaino looked, then slowly smiled. The steel security door was filthy, old, weathered and well covered with spray paint. The hinges were brand-new. So was the knob, and the metal around them was dented and blackened. Whoever had rehung the door had taken a pretty cavalier attitude toward his job. “Someone took a Masterkey to that door.”

Bolan nodded. A Masterkey was usually a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with sand or some kind of granulated composite designed to slam off door hinges and locks. The soldier shook his head at the door. “You know, if you’re not going to do a job right, you just shouldn’t do it at all.”

“My mother always said that.”

“My mother always said everyone deserves a second chance.”

“A second chance to do what?” Kaino asked.

From the bag between his knees Bolan removed a Remington 870MCS shotgun with a fourteen-inch barrel and a pistol grip. “To hang a door correctly.”

“Now, that’s not the kind of shotgun a good, God-fearing Justice Department Observation Liaison Officer should carry.”

Bolan slid two metal-cased shells into the shotgun and put three yellow plastics in behind them to bat cleanup.

Kaino slid from behind the wheel and pulled his revolvers.

The men walked nonchalantly down the alley. It was midday but Russian rap music made the poorly hung door vibrate. Bolan pointed the brutally shortened 870 at the top hinge and the laser sight in the grip put a red dot on it.

“So,” Kaino inquired, “you’re just going to light up that howitzer and announce—” The shotgun made a dull slap-click noise and the hinge twisted and broke as though hit by an iron fist. Kaino stood staring. “You have a silenced shotgun.”

“No, it’s the round that’s silent. The gunpowder hits a piston inside the shell and the piston rams the breaching load out of the shell down the barrel. The piston jams in the shell mouth so the entire detonation is contained inside the shell.”

“Very James Bond.”

Bolan’s weapon slap-clicked and the bottom hinge smeared away under the breaching round’s blow. He shucked in two more yellow rounds. “You want to go first?”

“Oh, no, you’re a guest.” Kaino generously waved his guns at the door for Bolan to take point. “By all means.”

Bolan kicked the door.

The music hit them like a wall. The bass thud-thud-thudded loud enough to rattle bones while someone snarled in Russian, undoubtedly about how bad he was and how many women he had. Bolan moved down the narrow hallway, passing a kitchen with notices that it had been closed by order of the health department. Bolan and Kaino peered through the windows in the double doors that led into the main tearoom.

The place looked like a cross between a shooting gallery and a strip joint. If any tea had ever been served here, the patrons had probably smoked it. Kaino made a disgusted noise. “Well now, that’s just sad.”

Bolan nodded at the tableau in front of them. “Tragic.”

Nikita “Papi” Popov sat at a table flanked by two of his goons. In Russian parlance the goons were typical Russian “hammerheads,” big men, probably former military with mixed martial arts physiques filling out their designer tracksuits. The man on Popov’s left had the typical stubble hair cut. Popov’s right-hand goon bore a startling resemblance to a six-foot-six Jesus.

No one at the table was happy.

Indeed, all three mobsters appeared to have been beaten into pulps. They were well bandaged. Popov’s right-hand man had his right arm in a sling. The left-hand goon’s head was wrapped like a mummy. Popov appeared to have gotten the worst of it. He sat shirtless with his ribs taped and his left arm in a sling. Contusions grossly contorted the Russian prison gang tattoos covering Popov’s skin.