and they could head straight back out to sea, and three, one of the nice things about clay-brick adobes was that short of heavy machine-gun fire they were pretty much bulletproof.
Busto nodded as Bolan worked. “You’re good.”
Bolan wished he had a medical stapler but his knitting skills would have to do. “Thanks.”
“I couldn’t do what you did inside his arm.”
Bolan shrugged. “That’s okay. Bandanna.”
Busto mopped Bolan’s brow with her bandanna. “But what you’re doing now?”
“Yeah?”
“I can do better.”
Bolan accepted that. Dominico groaned as he dug his thumb higher up on the femoral artery and let Busto get to sewing. “How’s it hanging, tough guy?”
“Pain I don’t mind. I’ve had plenty of that, but my fingers feel funny. Like my foot. It went tingly and numb when I hurt my back and had to quit wrestling.”
Bolan had been afraid of that. If a bullet damaged the femoral artery, it generally damaged the femoral nerve, as well. The question was whether the nerve had been nicked or just traumatized. The fact was Dominico needed a doctor. “I’m thinking of sending you back to Mexico City.”
“Fuck that, man. I’m just a quart low and need a nap.”
Busto sat back from her suturing and wiped a sweating brown tequila bottle across her brow. Dominico flinched as she took the tequila, poured some over the entry and exit wounds and gave herself a chaser before winding a bandage around his arm. Busto sighed as she sat on the ice chest and reached for her cigarettes. Her right cheek was purple; her left one was turning black. She grabbed ice from the hotel bucket and held it against her face with a sigh. Dominico took another long swig from the bottle and closed his eyes. The whole team needed a nap.
The problem was a nuclear time bomb was ticking.
Dominico began to snore.
“Najelli, I’m going to give him a couple hours’ rest. I need to contact my people.”
Busto opened the chest and cracked herself a fresh beer. “I’ll stay by him and watch.”
Bolan went in and plugged in his laptop and satellite link. He punched in his access codes and Aaron Kurtzman was online instantly. “You’ve been busy, Striker.”
Bolan took a seat on the cabin’s single rope bed. “Yeah, well, you know.”
“Culiacán local and federal police have been lighting up all night.”
“How bad is it?”
“Well, officially there’s a manhunt going on.”
Bolan had expected nothing less. “And unofficially?”
“Everyone thinks it was a cartel assassination, and with Varjo Amilcar dead there’s a sudden power vacuum in Culiacán. No one has any idea who did it but territory is territory. The major cartels moved northward into Baja and along the Texas border in the last decade, but Culiacán is still considered the old alma mater of Mexican crime and being acknowledged as boss there has prestige. On top of that Amilcar wasn’t popular. No one is crying over him.”
“What’s the situation on the coast like?”
“The Mexican Navy and Coast Guard are watching for Varjo’s boat, but they figured whoever stole it went out to sea and are burning north. They’re putting up a cordon around Baja.”
“No mention of Memo officially or otherwise?”
“You caught a break on that one. Anyone who recognized him during your raid on Amilcar’s place is currently deceased. The police are looking for two suspects, a yanqui vaguely matching your description, a man described as little more than a Mexican national, and unfortunately Señora Najelli Busto is wanted by name for questioning.”
Bolan had been afraid of that. Amilcar had undoubtedly bragged about his impending conquest and there had been survivors in the battle on the river. “She and her family are going to need asylum in the United States.”
“We’re already putting in the paperwork, Striker.”
“Thanks, Bear.”
“What have you got on your end?”
“Somehow Amilcar got a hold of all of Memo’s old routes and contacts. How is still a mystery. Apparently Dominico took pains to cover his tracks when he got out of the life. He says he doesn’t know how this could happen.”
Kurtzman frowned on the video link. “You think Dominico is lying?”
“If I was reading this in a report I’d say yes, but I’ve been hanging with him for three days now. He’s had his chances to turn on me or make a break for it, and unless he’s one hell of an actor he is genuinely mystified and appalled at what’s happened to his old machine. He sure as hell wasn’t faking his reaction to the men with radiation sickness at Camp One.”
Kurtzman sighed unhappily. “We’ve heard from Dr. Corso. The surviving radiation victims have died.”
Bolan shook his head. “I don’t suppose they got any information out of them?”
“Sorry, Striker. They never woke up.”
“What did the interrogation team get out of Pinto Salcido?”
“Not much more than he already told you. Whoever is behind all this kept him pretty ignorant. We’re going to have to figure they have cutouts all the way up the chain. The good news is the team did work up some pretty decent police sketches from his descriptions of the men who took the material off his hands. I’m sending them now.”
Bolan clicked on the jpeg files and three police sketches appeared on the screen. The first was Caucasian. His receding hair, beard and mustache had all been trimmed to a matching one-millimeter of stubble. His nose was broken and he had a lateral scar going through his left eyebrow. The stats read six feet and two hundred pounds and he smelled like muscle to Bolan. The second sketch was of a Mexican man sporting dark glasses, a short mullet, sideburns and a Vandyke beard. He was two inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than the first suspect. The third man was thin-faced, with a long nose and curly black hair pulled into a short ponytail. Bolan had to agree with Pinto Salcido’s initial impression. The two Caucasians definitely smelled Euro. “We get anything on the descriptions?”
“No, but we’re distributing them to the border patrol and posting them at all U.S. checkpoints. Homeland Security is sending them to all the airports. We can expect full distribution within forty-eight hours.”
It wasn’t enough. The material could switch hands anytime before the attempt was made to smuggle it into the United States, and it was anyone’s guess whether that would be by land, sea or air. The opposition would have to be complete idiots to have the same three men try to ride the material all the way, and Bolan had the feeling he wasn’t dealing with stupid men. At the moment the suspects were most likely bribing their way across Mexico, where they didn’t already have complicit help from the authorities.
Kurtzman
