Devil's Mark. Don PendletonЧитать онлайн книгу.
up?”
Bolan watched the rooster tails of dust rising in the distance from multiple vehicles. “Company.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“We’ve got company,” Bolan announced as he strode into the pueblo. Two pulque jars lay on their sides empty and a third was open. Fausto seemed to be matching the prisoner mug for mug. The difference was Fausto was still flint eyed. Balthazar Gomez was hammered out of his gourd and babbling. Bolan was mildly disturbed to see that the Valencia Cartel’s #1 sicario was crying. “What’s his problem?”
Villaluz, Wang and Fausto were all frowning as Gomez babbled in Mexican slang Bolan couldn’t follow.
Villaluz shook his head. “He keeps going on about La Bestia and how we’re all dead.”
Warnings began spider-crawling up Bolan’s spine. “The Beast?”
“Yes, he—”
The Executioner stalked across the room. “La Bestia?” Gomez jerked as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. “The Beast?” Bolan shouted. Gomez howled as Bolan grabbed him by the hair and hurled him prone.
Smiley shouted in alarm. “Coop!”
The cop, the gunrunner and the old rancher watched with cold-eyed interest.
Bolan checked Gomez’s right hand and wrist. He was covered with tattoos, but Bolan wasn’t finding what he suspected. “The mark!” he demanded. “¡La Marca de la Bestia! ¿Dónde?”
Gomez moaned.
Bolan ripped away his prisoner’s wifebeater. Tattoos of naked women, crosses and gang signs crawled all over his flesh. The soldier found what he was looking for behind Gomez’s right ear. Bolan let out a long breath. Smiley peered over his shoulder and made an unhappy noise. “Oh, hell no. Tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
The ex–Valencia Cartel sicario had 666 tattooed behind his ear.
Balthazar Gomez bore the Mark of the Beast.
Villaluz and Fausto crossed themselves in unison.
“So…” Wang’s Texas drawl shook as he spoke. “This’s like, some kind of satanic shit or somethin?”
“Yeah,” Bolan affirmed.
Gomez shuddered like a squid and babbled.
Bolan’s blood was cold in his veins. “What’s he saying now?”
Villaluz looked down on Gomez as if a giant, pulsing, gangrenous spider had dropped into their midst. “He says no one can escape the Beast. He bears the mark, he is his, and now so are we.”
Smiley was a little pale. “How the hell did they find us? We went dark, and I searched Gomez personally. He isn’t wired up.”
“I do not like it,” Villaluz agreed. “If we had been followed from Tijuana, my contacts would have told me, and we switched cars in Mexicali.” He turned a vaguely suspicious eye on Wang. “J.W.?”
Wang looked hurt. “Aw, hell, Iz, you tell me how! I didn’t know I was kidnapping Balthazar today until Coop here beat the crap out of him and threw him in my trunk, much less anything about a road trip to a goat ranch.”
Bolan eyed the stricken BMW baking in the sun outside. “What about your car?”
“My guys sweep it for GPS and bombs every morning and every night.”
“Yeah?” Smiley said. “So how did they find us?”
Wang glared defiantly. “Maybe there’s some kind of leak up north? Maybe someone bought some DEA agents?”
Smiley bristled.
Bolan cut short the speculation. “It doesn’t matter,” he stated. “Right now the cavalry is coming, it isn’t ours and I don’t think it’s a rescue. It’s a cleaning job. Kill everyone and take their heads.” Bolan rose from the quivering mass that was Balthazar Gomez. “Better gear up. We’ve got about five minutes.”
Bolan went to a bag and began to pull weapons. The Chinese QBZ-95 assault rifles were black, stubby, ugly weapons and not one of his particular favorites, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Don’t suppose you’ve got grenades, Wang?”
The gunrunner finally had something to smile about. “This is Mexico, amigo. The wise man goes nowhere without something that goes boom.”
Bolan took in the duffel full of what looked like dull green, minifootballs on sticks with fins. They were PRC 70 mm rifle grenades. “How many you got?”
“Twelve.”
“How many rifles we got?”
“Six, one for each of us plus two spares,” Wang replied.
“You come prepared. What’s the range on these bad boys?” Bolan asked.
“Seventy-five meters, but I’d wait until sixty, fifty would be better.”
Bolan took out a grenade and clicked it onto the muzzle. “Load up every weapon, and keep handing them to me when I start firing.”
Wang was mildly outraged. “What, you’re gonna hog them all?”
“You ever fired a rifle grenade?”
“Hell, yes. I play with all my toys before I sell them.”
“Ever fired one in anger?”
Wang had no response to that.
Bolan nodded. “Load them all, and when I start firing keep handing them to me.”
He looked at Fausto and his M-1. “Is he any good with that Garand?”
“He can hit an ant in the ass at eight hundred meters,” Villaluz announced.
Fausto smiled shyly and patted his rifle. “Six hundred.” He took out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and perched them on the end of his nose. “Seven-fifty?”
“Good man,” Bolan said. “I’m going to grenade them as they come in range. I want everyone else to hold fire except Fausto. Fausto, you just do what comes natural whenever you feel it.”
The old man took an ancient canvas bandolier full of clips off the back of his chair and walked to one of the slit windows. He shoved a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth and began cracking seeds and spitting shells as he peered toward the mouth of the canyon. Bolan got the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time Fausto had defended Fort Goat.
“Bree, how about being my grenade wench?”
Smiley grinned, and despite the tan skin and black hair he could see the Irish smiling in her eyes. “I’m your girl!”
Bolan gave her the basic rundown, and Smiley started loading clips and clicking grenades on muzzles. Wang and Villaluz began emptying gear bags, laying spare clips, extra pistols and hand grenades on the table. Villaluz glanced down at Gomez and took the precaution of binding his ankles together. The gangster shuddered on the adobe floor. “La Bestia…La Bestia…he comes…for us all…”
“Shut him up,” Bolan ordered.
Gomez earned himself a strip of duct tape across the mouth. He blew snot over his gag and shook.
Villaluz shot Bolan a look. “This is not right.”
“No.” Bolan’s skin was crawling as it had the other night on the streets of Tijuana before the attack. “No, it’s not.” He stepped to the door with a grenade-mounted rifle in hand. “I’m going to step outside. I’ll need a bucket brigade. Keep them coming.”
Bolan stepped out of the pueblo and the Mexican sun hit him like a hammer. He gazed out at the canyon mouth. It was around 1:00 p.m., and heat baked everything. The salt flats in the distance were one vast kiln of shimmering