Bolan bobbed his head, risking a glance at his surroundings. Buildings swept past at a lazy speed. Clapboard affairs with broken, filthy windows and signs that were no longer legible.
In other words, perfect.
A dead-end town, situated on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, caught between national boundaries. There were a hundred just like it scattered along the length of the United States’ southern border—invisible, forgotten places. Some inhabited, others not, but all perfect places to do business for drug traffickers of either nationality. Like leaks in a levee, they excreted trickles of narcotics from Mexico into Texas, Arizona and California.
Bolan had been tracking the current shipment for days, hoping to plug this particular leak. He’d taken out a poppy field in Sinaloa earlier in the week, and then caught up with the shipment as it approached the Arizona border. Getting onto the truck had been interesting and had used up his quota of luck for the week. From here on out, he was playing it careful.
The truck rumbled over a pothole and Bolan gritted his teeth as he was rattled down to his bones. He tried to stretch, to work out the kinks in his limbs, knowing he’d need every iota of agility in the coming minutes. When you were dealing with a bullet, even a fraction of an inch could be a useful distance, and the difference between life and death.
According to his sources, there shouldn’t be more than a dozen men all told at the rendezvous, but that was plenty. The odds were always the same once you crept up into double digits—namely, bad.
He smiled, baring his teeth. Bad odds only meant that he’d have to work fast to even them. And he was in the mood for “fast.”
The truck gave a depressed growl as it came to a halt behind a two-story building that had seen better decades. Voices, speaking Spanish and English in equal measure, rose to audibility. Bolan tensed and prepared to make his move. He pushed himself up an inch, balancing on the struts holding up the tarp, and switched his grip on the Heckler & Koch UMP-45 strapped across his chest. There was a van parked nearby. It had once been white, but presently it was the color of nicotine, and it was occupied. Bolan counted eight heads, plus the man sitting in the van. The odds were better than he’d thought.
The van door slammed. “It’s about damn time, Ernesto. I got places to be.”
Bolan pulled himself slowly toward the edge of the truck facing away from the voices.
“Oh? Better places than this, Jorge?” someone—Ernesto, Bolan assumed—said. “I feel hurt. Here, in the heart.”
“You have a heart?”
“Well, it’s not mine.” Laughter. Bolan hunched, rising into a slight crouch. His finger tapped the trigger guard of the submachine gun.
“Yeah, that’s funny,” Jorge said in a voice that implied it wasn’t. “Look, get the stuff loaded. I got to go.”
“Something I should know about?” Ernesto said before barking orders in Spanish. Bolan heard the tailgate of the truck come open. Metal scraped against metal.
“Sweets needs drivers.”
The truck sank slightly as someone—several someones—climbed aboard. Bolan took a breath and gripped the end of a wire sticking out of the tarp. Earlier, while the truck was in motion, he’d used the KA-BAR knife strapped to his leg to cut a thin hole in the tarp. From there, he’d attached an M-18 smoke grenade—its pull ring connected to the wire in his hand—to the inside of the tarp with a strip of nonreflective tape. The men sitting in the back hadn’t noticed. They would in a minute.
Gripping the wire, he prepared to roll off the edge of the roof.
“Drivers? For what? He outsourcing now?” Ernesto said.
“Not quite. He’s got a hundred units need to be over the border yesterday.”
Bolan froze. Units? Did they mean weapons? Other than drugs, weapons were often smuggled to inner city gangs in the Southwest. He listened.
“A hundred. Huh. That’s more than usual.” Ernesto grunted.
“That’s what I said. Know what he said?”
“Sweets?”
“Yeah. He said, money can roll back the most stubborn of tides,” Jorge said.
Ernesto snorted and said, “Maybe my English is not so good. That makes no sense.”
“I speak English perfectly. It makes no damn sense to me, either. Goddamn Zen cowboy shit.”
The truck bounced under Bolan as the merchandise was moved out. He had to act while the majority of the smugglers were in the truck, but he wanted to hear the rest of the conversation.
Decisions, decisions.
Moments later, his choice was made for him. He heard a muffled question in Spanish. Something jostled the wire in his hand. Bolan moved instantly. He rolled off the edge of the truck, hauling the wire with him. Something went ping even as he hit the ground.
The gas canister hit the bed of the truck and vomited dark smoke with a serpentine hiss. Cries of alarm echoed from within. Bolan let off a burst through the tarp, then rose into a crouch and swung around the edge of the tailgate, the UMP-45 cradled in both hands. A smuggler, tall, dressed in surplus fatigues and wild-eyed, half fell out of the truck. Bolan pulled back on the trigger, sending the man’s body jerking and whirling away.
“Shit! What—” A tall Mexican that Bolan figured was Ernesto dug for a large pistol holstered beneath one arm. He was dressed well, in a thin suit, his dark shirt open nearly to his navel. Bolan caught sight of a gaudy tattoo as the smuggler dived behind the other side of the truck.
A machine gun chattered and tore through the tarp, forcing Bolan to dodge it. The Executioner moved with lethal grace, springing to his feet and sliding around the back of the truck. Smoke boiled out of it, and he let off a second short burst into the interior. He spun on his heel, his weapon snarling. Another smuggler was punched backward, a spray of red arcing from his face and chest. The UMP clicked on empty. Bolan reached for another clip.
A man lunged at him, machete whistling through the air. Bolan let the UMP fall to dangle from its strap, and stepped aside, swatting the blade of the machete with the flat of his hand. He slapped the blade down to the ground and swept its owner’s feet out from under him. As the smuggler fell, Bolan kicked the machete away.
Colored smoke hung thick on the air, and he could hear the scratch of rubber soles on dirt. Bolan jabbed his opponent quickly in the face, then, as the smuggler reeled back, clutching at his nose, the big American rammed his fist into the man’s throat. Cartilage crumpled and the man collapsed, gagging. Bolan swept up the machete and reversed it with a twirl of his wrist, driving it down into the smuggler’s skull with a wet crunch.
Bullets plucked at the ground at his feet and he sprinted forward, toward the van. The owner—Jorge—was a light-skinned man, built stocky, and he backpedaled, hands up, despite the pistol on his hip, as Bolan thundered toward him out of the smoke.
“Wait, wait, wait—” he shouted as Bolan slammed into him, shoulder first. They went down together, but only Bolan came up. He grabbed Jorge’s shirtfront and slung him bodily behind the van.
“Damn it, wait!” Jorge yelped. Bolan knocked him sprawling and joined him behind the van.
“You keep quiet. Maybe you’ll live through this.”
Ernesto and two men, both armed with AK-47s, moved forward out of the smoke, looking around wildly. Bolan pressed his foot to Jorge’s throat and twisted around the edge of the van, bringing his weapon up even as he slammed a full magazine home.
“Hey! Gringo, you going to—” Ernesto began.
The UMP burped. Ernesto screeched, and his pistol discharged as he toppled. His companions fell more quietly. Bolan waited a minute, then two. He relaxed slightly. No movement from the truck.
All