“Where’s…what?” Between the flash-stun, the beating, the impromptu skydive and swim and the strobing, Salcido was at an all-time moral low. “Where’s what? I got money, I got drugs…. Whatever you want.”
“I want the material.”
Salcido gasped. “What…material?”
Bolan frowned beneath his mask. It was possible that Salcido had no idea just what had been stored in his warehouse. “You had a very important consignment in the warehouse. Now it’s gone.” Bolan leaned more weight into his knee. “Where is it now?”
“Shit…I don’t know. I was just paid to sit on it until pickup.”
“Who picked it up?”
“I don’t know, some guys. I didn’t know them.”
Bolan sighed inwardly. Unfortunately he was fairly certain Salcido was speaking the truth. “When did the plane leave the airstrip?”
Salcido suddenly became reticent.
Bolan dialed the light up to 150,000 candlepower and hammered Salcido with the strobe. The man groaned and twitched feebly. At this level some individuals were known to have seizures and the drug lord had already had a hard night. “They left by truck! They took the road north!”
Bolan killed the light. “How many men?”
“Three.”
“Who were they?”
“I told you! I don’t know!”
“Describe them.”
“One was Mexican. He did all the talking, and he didn’t talk much. The other two were white boys.”
Bolan cocked his head. “Americans?”
“I don’t know…I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t say anything, but they acted all cool and European and shit. They were all dressed down, but you could tell they were suits.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
“This morning.”
Bolan nodded. He might have caught a break. It was 650 miles to the closest point of the border. That was a long haul through a lot of rural Mexico. “What kind of truck?”
“I don’t know what kind of truck!”
A man lurched onto the back patio coughing and hacking. He carried a revolver in one hand and machete in the other. Salcido screamed as Bolan put a burst into the interloper’s chest and hammered him back into the hacienda. Bolan waited a moment to make sure he stayed down and then returned his attention to Salcido.
“What kind of truck?” he repeated.
“I don’t know!”
“Describe it.”
“I don’t know! A flatbed! Like farmers use! The cab was blue!”
“How big was the load?” Bolan persisted.
“It was like six packing crates.”
“How big?”
“Like the size of coffins. I didn’t ask any questions. I got paid not to ask questions. My men loaded it up and they took off.”
“How was it loaded?”
“In a pyramid, three on the bottom, two in the middle and one on top. They’re tied down and have a tarp over them.”
“Were they heavy?”
Salcido considered this. “My boy Chivo says it felt like they were loaded with rocks.”
“Any of your boys feeling sick?”
Salcido seemed confused by the question. “Sick? No, no one is sick. Why?”
Bolan ignored the question. “You say you don’t know who picked the load up or where they went?”
“No.”
“Who sent it?”
Salcido got reticent again.
Bolan strobed him.
“Hey! Shit! Man! I—”
“Talk to me and you live.” Bolan was implacable. “You don’t, I shoot you and ask someone else.”
“I don’t know who sent it! I’m just part of the pipeline!”
“Who was the part behind you?”
Salcido trembled. Bolan gave him a bit more knee in the sternum.
“King Solomon! He sent it up from Mexico City!”
It was a name Bolan had heard of in Mexican crime. He heaved Salcido to his feet and handcuffed him. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“A walk? Where?”
Bolan gave him an encouraging shove. “Into the hills.”
“Aw, shit, aw, shit…you promised. You promised!”
Bolan marched Salcido whimpering, blubbering and begging for mercy into the Sinaloan night. By the time they had gone two miles the drug lord had fallen five times and thrown up twice. Once out of fear and the second time out of exhaustion. Bolan stopped at the drop point. “On your knees.”
“Por favor, amigo! Please! Plea—”
Bolan kicked Salcido’s legs out from under him and swiftly manacled his feet and hog-tied him. Bolan stripped out of his raid suit and pulled on jeans and a leather jacket, then put most of his weapons and gear into a large duffel. He clicked on the GPS transponder. A pair of Sinaloan CIA assets would come and pick up Salcido and the gear. They would get descriptions of the three men in the truck and get police sketches out and sit on the drug lord. Bolan heaved up the BMW Dakar motorcycle he had jumped with and kicked it into life. The nuclear materials were heading north. The Executioner had only one lead, and it was forcing him to turn south. Back to Mexico City.
Back to where the whole thing had started.
CHAPTER TWO
Culiacán
Bolan plugged his laptop into his satellite link and typed in his codes. Lights blinked on the link and told him the line was secure. Moments later Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s genius in residence and lord of the Computer Room, blinked into life on an inset screen in real time. “What have you got for me?”
“A name,” Bolan replied. “King Solomon.”
“Guillermo ‘King Solomon’ Dominico?” It was a name Kurtzman was familiar with. He clicked keys on his side of North America and brought up DEA and FBI files. “Smuggling nuclear materials seems to be a bit out of his normal purview.”
Bolan had never personally run up against Dominico, but he knew him by reputation. “I would have said the same thing about Pinto Salcido, but Geiger counters didn’t lie and when he and I had our little talk I don’t think he was, either.”
“Well, as drug dealers go he’s a pretty interesting cat,” Kurtzman stated.
Bolan scanned the DEA files and they agreed with what he’d heard. Guillermo Dominico had appeared on the smuggling scene literally out of nowhere with a couple of planes and respectable war chest of seed money to start his business. His father had been a crop duster in the State of Nayarit who went on to buy some land and become a fairly successful grain farmer. Dominico had taken the skills he’d learned from his father and earned a reputation as a daredevil pilot who could land a plane anywhere. From the very beginning he had liked to spread his money around in the string of little towns