Don Pendleton - Devil's Mark

“I don’t know.” Wang looked Bolan straight in the eye. “What would you like me to do about it?”

“Go to war,” Bolan said. He looked around at the crates of armament. “What else have you got?”

Bolan sat shotgun in Wang’s black BMW 7 series sedan. An exploratory tap of his knuckles on the body panels upon entry told Bolan the car was armored. Wang pointed to the corner across the street. “You see that guy?”

Bolan looked through the tinted window. A man as big as Bolan stood outside a barbershop on the La Chinesca street corner as if he owned it. He wore mirrored blue aviator sunglasses and a blue-and-white team Cruz Azul soccer team warm-up jacket. His black hair was pulled straight back into a short ponytail. He had zipped open the front of his jacket in the heat, and gang tattoos crawled up out of his wifebeater from his chest to his neck. By the way he was standing and occasionally adjusting his jacket, Bolan could tell he was armed. He reeked Mexican gangster, but there was something about the vibe he was throwing off that the Executioner didn’t like. Great minds thought alike, and Smiley shook her head in the backseat. “There’s something hinky about that guy, and more than just the fact that he’s a scumbag.”

“Who is he?” Bolan asked.

Wang made an unhappy noise. “It took some time to find out, but his name’s Balthazar Gomez. He used to be a sicario for the Valencia Cartel.”

Smiley shook her head again. Sicarios were cartel enforcers and hit men. “No one ‘used to be’ a sicario, you just end up in jail or dead.”

Bolan mulled over other inconsistencies. The Valencia Cartel had merged with the west coast branch of the Federation Cartel. They were enemies of the Tijuana and the Gulf cartels and didn’t have any friends in the north. Valencia operated out of the state of Michoacán, which left their boy Balthazar about fifteen hundred miles away from home. “Definitely something hinky about him.”

“The boy is positively anomalous.” Wang nodded.

Bolan liked what he saw less and less by the second. “So what’s he doing hanging around in La Chinesca?”

Wang frowned mightily. “He’s waiting for me to pay him.”

Smiley leaned in between the seats. “Pay him for what?”

Wang squirmed in his seat slightly. “He wants his taste.”

Bolan looked at the man, and he didn’t like what he saw there either. “You telling me he’s leaning on you?”

Wang squirmed even more. He might be a Mexican citizen who had been educated in the United States, but he was also Chinese and he knew he was losing face. “Yeah.”

“Who’s he working for?”

Wang stopped short of hanging his head in shame. “I don’t know.”

Villaluz had been taking all this in with increasing unease. “Forgive me, J.W. We have known each other for a very long time. You know I respect you, but I must ask. Why haven’t you killed this man?”

Wang turned his face away to look out his window into the middle distance. “Because I’m afraid.”

“Who does he work for?” Bolan repeated.

“I don’t know. All I know is that he’s hombre marcado.”

“A marked man?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah.”

“You know even in Spanish that usually means a dead man.”

“I know!” Wang became increasingly agitated. “But that’s not what it means now.”

“What does it mean now?”

“It means he bears the mark,” Wang stated.

“The mark of what?” Bolan probed.

“I don’t know.”

Bolan looked at the Chinese gangster and realized Wang was genuinely afraid of Balthazar Gomez. “Tell me what you do know.”

“I know you don’t mess with marked men.”

“Or what?”

“The first three hombres marcados I heard about in Mexicali showed up at Tijuana cartel–controlled operations or fronts and demanded tribute. Of course they got killed and killed ugly.”

“And then?”

“And then? Within a day the men who killed them were dead. Their families were dead. Their immediate friends were dead. Their business associates were dead. Everyone’s head got taken, including the heads of the dead marked men in the morgue. The cartel capos who ran the killers got anonymous messages. Silencio, and pay. Two didn’t pay and they and their families and friends ended up just like their sicarios. The third one paid. The bosses of the two who didn’t got the same message. Silencio. Pay. There were a number of slaughters up the chain of command before they paid.”

“These marked men are always out of towners?”

“Always,” Wang affirmed. “As far as I’ve heard.”

“And they’re not taking over anyone’s territory or operations?”

“No, they just demand a taste.”

“And no one knows who’s running them?” Bolan asked. “No.”

“And now you’ve got an hombre marcado in La Chinesca demanding tribute from you.”

“Yeah.”

Bolan nodded and flung open his door. “Right.”

“Wait!” Wang cried, spewing a stream of very agitated Spanish, Cantonese and American profanity in Bolan’s wake.

“Here we go,” Smiley said.

Villaluz drew both revolvers. “This should be very interesting,” he opined happily.

Cars slammed to screeching standstills as Bolan strode across the street straight at Balthazar Gomez. “Hey! Balthazar!”

Nearby citizens of La Chinesca scattered in all directions. The former sicario sneered behind sunglasses as Bolan reached the curb. “White boy? You—”

“White man,” Bolan corrected him. Balthazar Gomez’s sunglasses snapped at the bridge and his nose flattened beneath Bolan’s fist. The soldier opened his hand, which made a sound like a frying pan slamming into a side of meat as he slapped teeth out of the marked man’s mouth. Gomez staggered backward. He clawed beneath his sweat jacket and came out with an FN Five-seveN pistol. Bolan snatched the weapon out of his opponent’s hand and beat him with it. More teeth flew as Bolan returned Gomez’s gun forehand and back across his jaw.

Bolan tucked the gun away and had to give Gomez credit for still being upright.

The Executioner gave him no mercy.

Gomez flung a palsied punch in Bolan’s direction. The soldier grabbed the arm and violently spun his sparring partner into a hip throw and projected him through the barbershop window. Glass shattered into flying shards. Chinese barbers shrieked and fled. Abandoned Mexican and Chinese customers in various states of midcoif cringed and jerked in their barber chairs. Bolan stepped over the sill through broken glass and into the carnage. Gomez was dazedly climbing up a shuddering patron’s legs. The big American grabbed him and flung him against the back wall. The wall-length mirror cracked. Balthazar sank into a sink, and the basin ripped halfway out of the wall. Bolan closed both fists and delivered a series of rights and lefts.

He stepped back, and Gomez fell forward, flopping out of the sink with his face beaten and his seat sodden. He mewled slightly as he was dragged out of the barbershop by his ponytail. Bolan whistled through his teeth, and Wang’s BMW bolted across the intersection and stopped in a shriek of rubber. Villaluz and Smiley emerged as Wang popped the trunk. The inspector grabbed the sicario’s legs and between them, he and Bolan heaved Balthazar into the trunk while Smiley covered the intersection with one of Wang’s Chinese pistols. Villaluz handcuffed their perp and zip-tied his ankles with riot cuffs. Bolan slammed the trunk shut and everyone jumped back into the car as people on the street gasped and pointed.

“Drive!” Bolan ordered.

Wang was seriously unhappy. “Where?” he snarled.

Villaluz began speaking in fast and furious Spanish. Wang shook his head fatilistically as he put the pedal down and the BMW lunged back into traffic.