held his cowboy boots together. The old man carried a Mexican army surplus M-1 Garand loosely in both hands. The weapon was missing a great deal of finish, and the stock was chipped and dinged but the metal and the wood gleamed with oil.
Fausto took in the panorama of interlopers stonily and finally turned his gaze on Villaluz. “Israel.”
“Fausto!”
Fausto’s features glacially moved into the semblance of a smile. “Che, amigo.” He looked back at the unexpected guests. “Yanquis?”
“Sí.” The inspector nodded.
Fausto contemplated this weird and wonderful turn of events. “Trouble?”
“Sí.” The inspector nodded.
“Ah.” Fausto turned and headed back into the pueblo. Villaluz nodded for them to follow. Bolan popped the trunk, and he and Villaluz manhandled Gomez out of the trunk. The man blinked dazedly in the glare and nearly toppled over. Villaluz produced a switchblade and cut the riot cuffs on his ankles. Gomez shuffled under the inspector’s direction on feet stupid from lack of circulation. Bolan and Smiley grabbed gear bags heavy with ordnance. Wang spent a few mournful moments gazing at his stricken vehicle before his shoulders sagged and he grabbed some gear and followed suit.
Bolan had eaten well the past twenty-four hours, but his stomach rumbled as he entered the brown cube of the pueblo. A pot of pinto beans and bacon loaded with chilies bubbled over the hearth. They dropped their gear, and all took seats around a table made out of two sawhorses and planks. Villaluz shoved Gomez in a corner. Bolan put a Chinese pistol on the table and sat facing him. Fausto put out earthenware plates and began slopping beans and bacon and put out corn tortillas that had been steaming in a pan in the coals. Fausto gave Villaluz a questioning glance and the inspector nodded. The old man took up a clay pot and began splashing liquid into the mismatched coffee mugs around the table.
Bolan peered at the fresh pulque and smiled at Fausto. “Tlachiquero?” Fausto nodded. Tlachiqueros were men who harvested the juice of the maguey plant and made pulque. Tequila and mezcal were distilled liquors from the same plant. Pulque was simply fermented like beer, had roughly the same alcohol content and was as ancient as the Aztecs. Villaluz clapped Fausto on the shoulder. “Tlachiquero? Ranchero? Pistolero? Fausto does it all. He is a—” Villaluz savored the English euphemism “—jack of all trades.”
Fausto favored Bolan with a smile. “You like pulque, señor?”
“In the United States all you can get is the urine-in-a-can brands at the super mercado. But fresh made is always a pleasure.”
Fausto cackled like a rooster with a herniated testicle as Bolan poured back his pulque, keeping the grimace off his face. Pulque was definitely an acquired taste, and could charitably be described as milky-, musty- and sour-tasting all at the same time. But most of its manufacture across northern Mexico was an artisanal industry, and Fausto had definitely put the time and love into his trade.
Smiley and Wang shuddered down a sip each. Villaluz hit his mug with gusto. Fausto gave Gomez his attention for the first time. “Who is this man?”
“He was trying to lean on our friend Wang,” Bolan said.
Fausto took an ancient buck knife out of his pocket and flipped it open with a snap of his wrist. The blade had been sharpened so many times it was starting to resemble a scalpel. He looked to the inspector. “You want I should cut him?”
Gomez flinched but barely.
The inspector held out his mug for more pulque and measured Gomez. “Not just yet.”
The ride through Laguna Salada hadn’t done the beaten man any favors. “Perhaps he’d like a little something to cut the dust,” Bolan suggested.
“A waste,” Fausto proclaimed.
“He won’t talk with a dry throat,” Bolan replied.
Gomez drummed his heels on the floor and thrashed as Fausto pried open his mouth with fingers like cold chisels. Fausto poured a mug’s worth of pulque down the sicario’s throat. Gomez gagged and sputtered, and the old man treated him to another.
Bolan finished his meal, then rose. “I’m going to make a call. Keep our buddy Balthazar hydrated.” The Executioner scooped up a Chinese assault rifle from one of the bags and stepped outside. He owned one of the latest satellite phones in existence, but in the box canyon he just wasn’t getting full bars. Bolan pulled on a faded Boston Red Sox cap and took a hike out of the canyon. He squatted in the shade of a stand of mesquite trees and got a signal.
Aaron Kurtzman’s craggy face appeared on his touch screen. “Striker! Where are you?”
“Laguna Salada,” Bolan answered.
Kurtzman frowned for just a moment as he searched the massive database that was his mind. “What are you doing there?”
Bolan scanned his phone’s camera back toward the pueblo. “Hanging at the goat ranch with Fausto, drinking pulque. You?”
“Mostly worrying about you. You got 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