State Of War

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?”

Bolan jerked his head aside as the revolver snapped and spit fire. The hair ripper behind him howled as he took a bullet in the shoulder. The soldier chopped his left hand into the shooter’s needle-tracked wrist and the revolver went flying. He took his bit of room and spun, his back fist unhinging the addict’s jaw. The drug-addled assassin dropped to his knees. Bolan slammed a knee up into his jaw and sent him into a temporarily blissful sleep.

Savacool’s rifle broke into rapid semiauto fire. Bolan heard tires squeal out on the street, but he had no time for it.

Kaino was suddenly beside him and he dropped junkies with Ali-worthy left jabs and Foreman-worthy rights.

The crowd fell back.

Bolan suddenly had space. He stood with his bloodied fists clenched. The mob’s moral check returned. The degenerate drug addicts reverberated between the two opposing poles of need and fear, but the battle dynamic in West Miami had changed. The dozen junkie croc-zombies still standing visibly deflated like balloons. Bolan’s voice was ice-cold. “Now, which one of you primate, screw heads lit up my ride?”

A frizzy-haired young man with a claw hammer in his hand dropped his weapon on Savacool’s lawn and fell to his knees in supplication. “Please...”

“All of you!” Bolan bellowed. “On your knees! Now!”

The standing junkies knelt. Some moved to hands and knees and others assumed the prone position with obvious practice. Savacool came down the steps with her weapon shouldered.

Bolan looked out onto the road. “He got away?”

“I didn’t want to risk firing into the crowd when he fired into you. I got a shot at him when the van screamed up, but I don’t know if I hit him. I gave the van the rest of my magazine.” Savacool shook her head unhappily. “He got away.”

Kaino stared at Bolan in awe. “I have never seen anything like it.”

Bolan took in the army of broken, moaning, drug-addicted and rotting humanity littering the field of battle by firelight. “Neither have I.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mercy Hospital, Miami

The doctor was appalled, both by Bolan’s smell and by his condition. She shook her head at the massive, blackening contusions where Bolan’s armor had taken .44 Magnum hits and held. “These are firearm-related blunt trauma contusions, Mr. Cooper?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bolan replied.

“That one’s a knife?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Dr. Gubatan had already known the answers. She sucked in her breath as she looked at his neck, biceps and thigh. “These are human bite wounds?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m required to inform you that I must report this to the police.”

Agent Savacool held up her badge. “It’s already been reported to the FBI.”

Dr. Gubatan sniffed Bolan again. It was pretty clear it was a smell she had encountered before. “This wouldn’t happen to be related to an incident in the West Miami area that is blowing up across all channels?”

“Doctor, I’m afraid I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

There were few things E.R. doctors in Miami hadn’t seen. Dr. Gubatan was even shorter than Savacool but about five times as wide. She scowled at the FBI ID like it was a personal affront, but her features set into a grimace of concern as she prodded Bolan’s blackening biceps. “The bite wounds are already going septic.”

Bolan wasn’t surprised, but he just didn’t have time for hepatitis. Anything even more chilling that a krokodil addict’s bite might be carrying would just have to be dealt with later. “I’ll need a round of full spectrum antibiotics.”

“You’re telling me.” Dr. Gubatan left the room nearly at a sprint while rapidly typing into her tablet. A nurse came in and began cleaning the bites.

“You all right?” Savacool asked.

“I feel like a zombie crawl just stomped a mud hole in me and tried to chew it dry. With a few shootings and stabbings in the mix.”

“No, Cooper. You went down in that rotting crowd, and I was too scared to shoot into it. Are you okay?”

“That was bad,” Bolan admitted.

Savacool was about an inch from collapsing in tears. “I’m still shaking.”

Bolan nodded. “Me, too.”

Savacool laughed, but it was laced with tension. “Not you! You’re stone cold.”

“I shake on the inside. I don’t shake on the outside until the job is done.” Bolan winked. “And I’m someplace safe with someone I like.”

“You know? Speaking as a black female Southern FBI agent—you’re the first man of any color or description who ever made sensitive sound cool.”

“That’s how I roll.”

“So how are you?”

“Hungry. Where’s Kaino?”

“Well, he went all Muhammad Ali on anything that even came close to the porch. You should have seen it.”

“I caught a bit of it. He had my six when it was getting really bad. He was something to see.”

“I relieved him of porch patrol and he went to back your play on the run. I pulled a sweep around the mob and tried to stop the van. Anyway, he busted some knuckles. He’s getting his hands taken care of and Miami-Dade pooh-bahs are debriefing him hard.”

“How about you?”

“I have been sternly informed to report in first thing in the morning.”

Bolan looked at his swollen hands and was reminded of the damage he had wreaked. “How about Cocosino’s army?”

Savacool’s shoulders twitched in revulsion. “They’ve been isolated for obvious reasons, but I visited their ward.”

Bolan nodded. “Bad?”

“Cooper, you don’t want to see these people under bright lights, and I’m not even adding in what you did to them. I still see them when I close my eyes.” Tears spilled down Savacool’s cheeks. “I know why you did it the way you did, and I respect it. I just don’t know if you did them any favors.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I already threw up,” Savacool said.

“Me, too.”

“What I want to do is to go to church. I want to pray for those people, and I shit you not, I wouldn’t mind hearing some words of comfort. But I just don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

“You got a big heart, Cool. But I mean they know about your great-aunt’s place, and that means they know about you. You’re on the list. I wouldn’t go home if I were you, or to any friends or relatives.”

“Well, hell, Cooper. Chances are they know we’re here. I don’t know if any place in Miami is safe, so unless you can requisition a helicopter, get clearance to land on the roof and...” Savacool’s voice trailed off. Her bemused disgust look returned. “You’re smiling.”

Bolan nodded at himself. “Some of this is going to require stitches. Gather up Kaino and meet me on the roof in an hour.”

Overtown, Miami

D ELILAH TEASED THE BULLET out of Cocosino’s back. He never flinched. “You got it out?”

“Yes.”

“Rifle or pistol?”

Delilah held up the conical .22-caliber bullet to the single bulb in the room. “Rifle.”

“The FBI bitch...”

Delilah tossed the bullet to the filthy basement floor and the surgical tweezers after it. “You want me to sew you up?”

“Hit me.”

Delilah took a cooked syringe of krokodil and injected it straight into Cocosino’s bullet wound. He visibly relaxed as the cocktail of codeine and solvents flooded his veins. Delilah looked at the rotting yet still strangely vital man beneath her and saw her future. There had been a time when he was one of the up-and-coming hot things in South Beach. Model, gigolo, getting acting jobs and working the club circuit. Then addiction had taken him down to the lowest, most execrable possible path a junkie could go. She had followed him down that spiral path. Then krokodil had arrived on Miami’s shores and taken him from the gutter to hell itself. He had become Cocosino, had become a killer to ensure an endless series of fixes until he could no longer function. Delilah didn’t want to think about what was happening to her own body, but she couldn’t help smelling it. Cocosino would need a new assistant soon. She pushed the image aside with drug-addled insanity and took a sniff of meth before sewing the bullet wound. “I like this El Hombre.”

“I love him. I love everything about him.” Cocosino lay motionless as the surgical needle moved through noninfected flesh. “I want him.”

“They called.”

“What did they say?”

“El Hombre, Agent Savacool and Kaino left the hospital by helicopter. Their whereabouts are currently unknown.”

“That’s not a problem,” Cocosino said.

“We’re out of a job.”

“Lots of people in Miami-Dade need killing. There are plenty of jobs.” Cocosino turned what was left of his face toward Delilah. “And we’ll see El Hombre again.”

Trump International Beach Resort

“W OW .” A GENT S AVACOOL stared out at the Intracoastal Waterway from the twenty-seventh-story balcony.

Kaino looked almost uncomfortable among such luxury. “Jeez, this hotel room is bigger than my house,” he said.

Bolan pulled his hand out of the ice bucket and flexed his fingers. “I was told 1,174 square feet.”

Kaino’s face went flat.

“It is a double suite,” Bolan admitted, and it was pretty damn swanky. “I’ve operated in Florida before. I know a few people who owe me a few favors.”

Savacool gave Bolan a stare equal to Kaino’s. “Donald Trump owes you favors?”

“No, and keep that in mind when you order from room service.”

Kaino waved his taped-up hands as he picked up a menu. “Don’t worry about that, man. A burger and a beer, and I’ll be—” Kaino sat upright in outrage. “A burger costs what! Madre de dios!” Kaino lost his English in shock and reverted to the Spanish of his youth.

Bolan turned to Jack Grimaldi. “Thanks for coming on short notice, Jack.”

The Stony Man pilot grinned. “When have you ever given me notice, Sarge?”

No one raised an eyebrow at the usage of the word Sarge.

“On average?” Bolan conceded. “Never.”

“And now he finally starts talking sense.”

“I got no notice, either,” Kaino concurred.

“Mine was short,” Savacool agreed.

Bolan sighed. “Any of you want out?”

“Oh, hell no!” Kaino laughed. “I’m seeing this one through.”

“To the end,” Savacool agreed.

Grimaldi gave Bolan a droll look. “I gather I’m here for the duration?”

“I’m thinking at least to Mexico. What have you got for me?”

The pilot put a laptop and several files on the dinner table. Bolan’s team gathered around. Kurtzman’s face appeared in fuzzed-out mode on the screen. “There have been a slew of killings in coastal Tamaulipas that are awfully damn similar to Savacool’s boy Christo Bruno’s. It looks as if there is a real fight shaping up for Tamaulipas. Someone is pushing hard to move the Gulf Coast off the Gulf Coast or force them to play ball. Of course they’re not having it, and the bodies are piling up.”

Bolan nodded. “Do we have anything on Salami?”

“An informant told us he’s holed up in a bungalow on Miami Beach. We have it under surveillance. You’ll also be happy to know that the krokodil supply has been seriously disrupted. Word on the street is you just can’t get it. Junkies are picked up left and right committing burglaries to try to steal prescription meds to cook with. But that was always your plan, to make a mess and see who comes to clean it up.”

“It’s one way to get the ball rolling, and we have Cocosino and foreign mystery assassins.”

Savacool gave Kaino a glance. “You sure the sniper was speaking Russian?”

“Man, I couldn’t swear to it.”

Savacool gave Bolan a searching look. “Krokodil is a Russian drug. It would make more sense.”

“In some ways, but like Kaino and I discussed, it’s an awfully long hop from Moscow to Miami to pedal stuff junkies buy with pocket change, and speaking of Russians, when we found Popov he had already had his ass handed to him.”

“So you don’t think the Russians are involved?”

“I think they’re somehow part of the mix and, more important, I think there are players in this game that have yet to reveal themselves.”

“So how do you want to play it?”

“I think I want to have another conversation with Salami.”

Kaino smiled happily. “Wear a hat!”

“Definitely.”

“Oh.” Grimaldi reached into his gear bag. “Almost forgot. A friend worked this up for you.” He tossed Kaino a Miami Heat cap. It made a strangely meaty thud in the big master sergeant’s palm as he caught it. Kaino massaged the impact material in the brim almost erotically and began adjusting the tab in the back for his head. “Sweet!” Kaino settled his cap on his head with a happy sigh. “So why do you want to talk to Salami? He’s an asshole. You think he lied to us?”

“No, I think he believed everything he told us when he told it, but I think he may have had some very interesting conversations with some very interesting people since you and I had our powwow with him. Plus, I’m thinking if Savacool can get a line on where he’s hiding out, so can the people we’re working against.”

Grimaldi had seen this more times than he had fingers and toes. “You think he’s being watched?”

“I’m counting on it.”

“So we’re going to pile into a car, drive up to Salami’s beach blanket Babylon and see who shoots at us? Again?” Kaino asked.

Bolan shook his head. “Not exactly.”

Savacool leaned her elbows on the table, perched her chin in her hands and gave Bolan the big brown eyes. “Do tell.”

“You and Kaino are going to pile into a car, loaded for bear, and be ready to hit Salami’s place on my signal.”

Savacool regarded Bolan with grave suspicion. “And you?”

Bolan looked at Grimaldo. “Did you bring me a jump rig?”

“Did I bring him a jump rig...” the pilot scoffed.

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