a sitrep for me?”
Bolan gave Kurtzman the condensed version, and the computer expert began rapidly tapping keys on his end as he began pulling up CIA, FBI, DEA and NSA files. His craggy brow rearranged itself in question. “Running scared doesn’t fit this Wang fellow’s file.”
“Well, Wang isn’t typical tong, but he walks with heavy machismo around Mexicali. You’re right, it isn’t normal, and the cartel guys aren’t acting normal, either. You capture cartel guys, and they usually start making threats or get all sullen.”
“Well, I’m looking at your boy Balthazar’s file and it pretty much jibes with what Wang told you. Cuah Nigris was pretty much a sociopath who found his niche. Balthazar Gomez is about as professional as cartel guys get short of being ex-military. He was a genuine A1 sicario down in Michoacán for the Valencia Cartel. Seven kills directly associated with him but no convictions. Half a dozen more suspected.”
“Give me a timeline.”
“Last word on him is that he was picked up by the police in a general sweep six months ago in the state capital, Morelia. They couldn’t pin anything on him and let him go. Then he drops off the planet. His next known appearance is you grabbing him in La Chinesca this morning.”
“So who’s he working for?”
“That is the million-dollar question. Cartel guys betray one another all the time, but it’s almost always because of power grab or a rivalry within the cartel. For a sicario to leave one cartel and go work for another is almost unheard-of. For one, it would be an immediate death sentence from the people you betrayed, and even if another cartel used you, you’d never be trusted.”
“And yet our boy Balthazar is a thousand miles from home demanding a taste out of the Mexicali tongs, working for we don’t know who.”
“It is a conundrum,” Kurtzman admitted. “And you say Wang says that most of these marked men are out-of-towners?”
“Out-of-staters,” Bolan confirmed. “And as far as he knows, all of them bear Balthazar’s MO.”
“Hmm.” Kurtzman mulled that over. “A genuine intercartel foreign legion.”
Bolan smiled. “That’s pretty perceptive, Bear.”
“We try,” he agreed.
“I might be tempted to call it an intercartel group of untouchables.”
Kurtzman grinned in appreciation. “Even better, considering this new ‘marked-man’ status going around.”
“So who’s running them?”
“That is the question,” Kurtzman replied.
“You got anything new on the street and hospital fights in Tijuana?”
“Well, half of the victims have already been cremated and all of them were missing their heads. There’s not much to go on except the most basic of forensic evidence.”
Bolan rose to his feet. “All right, do what you can. I’ll get back to you.”
Kurtzman grew concerned. “What’s 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
