Don Pendleton - State Of War

In typical Russian mobster fashion they sat grim-faced, drinking vodka and staring into the middle distance. The sea of bottles on the table indicated they had been at it for a while.

“Those sure are some sulky Russians,” Kaino observed.

“I’d go so far as to say morally devastated.”

“Morally devastated. I like that.”

“Let’s see if moral devastation has put them in the mood to talk,” Bolan said. “You take Bullethead and I’ll take J-man.”

Bolan and Kaino strode through the doors. Between the pounding music, the pounding of vodka and the Russians’ pounded state of being it took them far too many moments to notice.

The soldier shouted over what he could only loosely describe as music. “Mr. Popov! We need to talk!”

“Shit! Fuck!” Popov went apoplectic. “Kill them!”

The goons rose and kicked back their chairs. Bolan and Kaino closed the distance. The Jesus-looking hammerhead tried to go for the gun under his jacket. Bolan put the ruby dot of the Masterkey’s laser sight on J-man’s slung right arm and fired. The Russian screamed and dropped to his knees as his already injured wing took a 12-gauge rubber baton round.

Kaino snapped his revolvers forward with practiced ease. He rammed the muzzle of his left-hand gun into the Russian’s solar plexus like a fencer, then clouted the Russian behind the ear with the butt of his right. The Russian mobster went boneless across the table and slid to the floor in a cascade of vodka bottles. “There goes my pension...” Kaino muttered.

Bolan put a riot round into the stereo and the Russian rap ceased in a shower of sparks. He shook his head at Popov’s state of affairs. “So, besides me, who could have done this to you?”

“Fuck you!”

Bolan pumped his shotgun’s action and the laser designated Popov’s sling. Popov screamed. “No! For fuck’s sake! Please!”

“For the duration of this conversation I would advise you not to make me ask you anything twice.”

Popov stared sulkily at the tabletop.

“Tell your boys to resume their seats.”

Popov snarled. J-man sat back in his chair cradling his arm. Bullethead managed to scrape himself off the floor and did the same.

Kaino tsked as he confiscated their pistols. “Someone messed these boys up but good.”

Bolan nodded. The Russians had been systematically worked over, severely, and by pros. The soldier’s instincts told him that the beat down hadn’t been punishment or a warning. Popov and his men had been interrogated. “You seen the like around here?”

Kaino eyed the collection of contusions and broken bones with a professional eye. He lifted his chin at the bloody bandages. “Not in a long time. Let’s take a look at the wounds.”

Bolan ripped a dressing off the top of Popov’s shoulder, which elicited a shriek. Bolan’s eyes narrowed at a very nasty, ragged laceration across the Russian’s medial deltoid. The wound looked as though an animal might have made it. Kaino let out a long breath between his teeth and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Blackjack?” Bolan suggested.

“Close. I’d say a flat, beavertail slapjack sap with a coil spring in the handle, lead- and clay-loaded. A snap of the wrist will break bones. You swing side-on—” Kaino nodded at the Russian’s wound “—they’ll cut right through flesh. Jeez, there was an old-timer on the force when I first came out of the academy. He could put his halfway through the Miami phone book with a good windup.”

“Miami-Dade doesn’t use saps anymore, do they?”

“Nope.” The master sergeant sighed wistfully as he gazed backward into a bright, shining, never-to-return time in Florida law enforcement. “Banned them years ago.”

“Someone worked over our Russians.”

“Someone beat them like rugs.”

“Popov,” Bolan asked, “who did this to you?”

Popov clenched his teeth. Bolan calculated the look in the Russian gangster’s eyes. There seemed to be a genuine battle raging in Popov’s guts as to whom he was more afraid of, the warrior in front of him or the interrogators who had left him and his men in this sorry state. Popov was a genuine tough guy, but Bolan was beginning to think that whoever had interrogated Popov had gotten what they wanted out of him. Bolan smiled coldly. He wasn’t a torturer, but he had no qualms about letting his enemies think that he was.

“Popov, I’m going to start by dropping a hammer on every injury you already have, and then I’m going to start inflicting new ones. Who did this?”

Sweat broke out on Popov’s bruised brow. He hissed a single word through his teeth. “Zetas!”

“Well, just, shit,” Kaino opined.

Bolan weighed the Russian’s response. Zetas weren’t good. None of the Mexican cartels and their gangs were good news, but the Zetas had originally been Mexican Special Forces soldiers who had received special training by the U.S. Army Rangers at Fort Benning. Many of the Mexican soldiers had finally thrown up their hands and gone to work for the Gulf Coast Cartel as muscle. In the end the Zetas had gone independent and were now at war with their former Gulf Coast employers.

“We’re out of here.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, unless you want to add something?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Popov gasped as Kaino ground the barrel of one of his revolvers into the gangster’s injured arm and pressed the other between Popov’s eyes. “Stop calling yourself Papi. That’s Puerto Rican. We own that, and you don’t have privileges.”

Popov glowered.

Kaino ground the muzzles of his pistols in Popov like he was drilling for oil. “Say it!”

“I am no longer to be calling myself Papi! You own that! I do not have privileges!”

Kaino holstered his guns. “Smart boy.”

CHAPTER THREE

Safehouse

Bolan gazed long and hard at his files. Krokodil was just about the worst thing he had ever come across. He had seen the results of weaponized flesh-eating bacteria, but he had never seen that kind of damage self-inflicted. Bolan shook his head and clicked out of the horrific catalog of flesh eaten down to the dermis and bones showing through suppurating muscle tissue. Bolan had dedicated himself to a War Everlasting against organized human evil. He would be damned if he let this drug get a foothold in the United States. Bolan couldn’t bring himself to hate the junkies, the cooks or even the dealers. From all his research, when it came to krokodil they were all one and the same. They lived to fix until they died looking like extras in a zombie film, but some organization had introduced this filth into Florida.

Bolan intended to introduce himself to those individuals directly.

Kaino sat cleaning and oiling his twin .357s. Had the revolvers not been finished a lustrous gunmetal blue they would have sparkled. “You’re not buying the Zeta shit.”

“According to my source, they seem to have the most reliable supply of crocodile here in the metropolitan area.”

“That jibes with what I know, as well, but I stand by my statement. You’re not buying the Zetas roughing up Popov and his playmates.”

“No, if the Zetas had paid a visit to the Tea Room there would have been a bloodbath, and assuming they came out on top, their method of inquiry would have included lopping off limbs and heads. For that matter, most of the original Zetas who were Special Forces operators are dead. Those who are still around are the equivalent of generals in the cartel. They don’t do field ops anymore, and they sure as hell don’t leave Mexico. On top of that, I’m thinking Masterkeying a door is a little bit above the brains and pay grade of their local street gang affiliates here in Florida. Popov and his pals got worked by pros, like you and me, and they were deliberately left alive.”