Devil's Mark. Don Pendleton

to blow them up.”

      Bolan nodded at Fausto. “Get back in your window. Cover the canyon mouth and keep an eye on the rims. J.W., Inspector, you’re with me, but fan out wide. If the doors on that truck open up and hardmen come out, I want them in a cross fire.”

      Bolan went for a walk.

      The rutted, pitted dirt path up to the pueblo was like the yellow brick road as it wove between the burning carcasses of cars that were sending the nasty black smoke of burning oil, upholstery and human flesh a hundred feet into the sky. Blackened bits of metal, glass and rubber littered the canyon floor. The sides of the canyon were littered with boulders and rock falls. Wang and the inspector moved swiftly from cover to cover. Bolan walked straight down the middle toward his impending appointment with his rifle at port arms. At ninety yards he began considering the shot. He could discern nothing through the tinted windshield, but he sure as hell felt himself being scrutinized and the scrutiny was decidedly unfriendly. At eighty yards Bolan’s finger slid onto his trigger. It didn’t matter if the man behind the glass was Satan’s favorite son and his pickup was armored up to endangered diplomat levels. No windshield was going to withstand two pounds of Chinese shaped charge warhead.

      And Bolan was getting tired of playing defense.

      At eighty-five yards all-terrain tires buzz-sawed into the dust in Reverse, and the Hummer suddenly shot backward the way it had come. Whoever was driving was good. He kept it in Reverse at an engine-burning twenty-five miles per hour and kept it on the path even as it bounced. Bolan watched as the Hummer disappeared in its own dust cloud. “Inspector?”

      “¿Sí?”

      “Let’s get license plates on any vehicle that’s still legible, then let’s take a look at the people in that flipped over RAV. Photos, fingerprints, anything we can work up real quick. J.W.? Fade back and spell Bree on Balthazar. Send her out. I want her agent’s eye and take on everything we find. Tell Fausto I want to move out of here in half an hour, and tell him I’m hoping he has a plan.”

      “You betcha.”

      Villaluz came out of cover and began snapping photos of the nearest hulk with his cell phone. Bolan did a lap around the Lincoln doing the same, but he suspected it wouldn’t do much good. He found blackened bodies and black rifles that had been blackened further. He didn’t find any plates and knew they had been removed. It would be hours before the wrecks were safe enough to prowl through, and Bolan didn’t have much hope of finding any VINs inside. Bolan ambled over the RAV and slung his rifle. He drew a pistol and squatted beside the driver’s shattered window. A Mexican man with a head covered with more ink than hair hung in his harness. About ten of Bolan’s rounds had gone through his chest. Bolan pushed back the man’s ear and scowled at the 666 tattooed there.

      Villaluz was doing the same on the passenger side. “I have a marked man, amigo.”

      “Same here.” Bolan went through his corpse’s pockets but all he found was ammo and enough knives to justify the word fetish. “You know we lit them up like the Fourth of July and they still kept coming.”

      “Yes, I noticed.”

      Bolan stood and waited for Smiley to bring the small forensics kit they had packed. “You ever seen that kind of zeal here in Mexico?”

      “To be honest, no. One hears of such stories, but only during the Mexican Revolution. Men charging the cannons and the Gatling guns.” Villaluz rose up creakily and looked at Bolan over the RAV’s chassis. “But I will tell you, I am not as young as I once was, and like many men my age, more and more I find myself watching the History Channel on cable TV.” Villaluz shrugged. “I swear, like senility, it is unavoidable.”

      Bolan let the man talk.

      “And one sees many such stories on the History Channel. The kamikazes of the Japanese Air Force. The juramentado, oath takers during the Moro Wars in the Philippines. The assassins of ancient Persia during the Crusades. All with a single trait in common.”

      “Fanaticism,” Bolan said. It was something he had run into too many times before.

      “Yes, fanatics,” the inspector agreed. “Utterly willing to die in the attempt to kill the enemies of their god or emperor.”

      “And our fanatics all bear the mark of the beast.”

      “Yes, and I will tell you something else. This is Mexico. We have you yanquis beat on occultism. Santeria, Aztec worship, voodoo, even satanism. I have seen it all. But these cultists are mostly interested in orgies, drugs and playing dress-up. Once in a great while their foolishness gets someone killed. But I tell you, they do not load up into SUVs by the bushel and make suicide assaults on pueblos in the Laguna Salada they have no business knowing about.”

      “So what do you think?”

      “I do not know what to think. All I can tell you is that this situation is new, anomalous, and, as Señorita Bree said, it is beginning to…creep me out. To be honest? I will tell you. I am scared.”

      Bolan regarded Villaluz over the RAV. It took a lot for a man like him to say something like that. The Executioner wasn’t scared. He had seen things far darker than this. But this situation was promising to get darker still, and he was willing to admit to being profoundly troubled. “We have to get Balthazar Gomez to the States.”

      “We are in agreement. However we are in a box canyon without transportation.”

      “I’m really hoping Fausto has something up his sleeve.”

      Villaluz smiled very tiredly. “I could tell you stories about the cornucopia of things Fausto has had up his sleeves.”

      “Over beer and shots, in the States, on me.”