Blood Play
Don Pendleton
When Intelligence sources link two suspicious deaths in New Mexico with a move by the Russian mafiya to infiltrate the Native American casinos, the national security risk runs dangerously deep. Control of this resort area guarantees possession of the tribal reservations' nuclear waste plant.Now the mob's primary objective is under way: processing plutonium for nuclear warheads in America's own backyard. Mack Bolan is on the move with members of the Stony Man commando teams, locked in the crosshairs of the Russian gangsters and racing against time and the odds. This treacherous field operation involves kidnapping, murder, classified secrets and a killing spree that won't end until Bolan claims victory–or forfeits his final fight to death.
“Incoming!” Kissinger shouted.
Grimaldi eased off the accelerator, falling back a few yards. Behind him Bolan powered down his window and leaned out, rattling off a diversionary burst. The ploy worked. The Stony Man warriors heard the faint throttle of the AK-47, but the rounds flew wide of their mark.
Kissinger had ducked below the dash, but righted himself, clutching his pistol, his eyes fixed on the rear of the panel truck in front of them.
“Looks like the guy’s reloading,” Grimaldi warned, putting the pedal to the metal. “Hang on. I’m going to ram them!” The Stony Man pilot was executing a last-ditch play. If they didn’t stop the truck, Franklin Colt was as good as dead.
Blood Play
Don Pendleton
Mack Bolan
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
—Edgar Watson Howe
1853–1937
What’s appropriate is direct action against perpetrators who commit atrocities for their own profit. Law-abiding people have no chance against these predators. That’s where I come in.
—Mack Bolan
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Taos, New Mexico
Walter Upshaw stared noncommitally at the elaborate architectural drawings laid out on the table of his modest two-bedroom home. It was situated atop Pueblo Peak, which afforded a panoramic view of the one-hundred-thousand-acre tribal reservation he helped administer as seven-time president of the Taos Pueblo Governing Council. One set of drawings illustrated a proposed sixty-thousand-square-foot casino with an attached four-story, four-hundred-room hotel. Another rendering transposed the designated site for the gaming facility onto a topographical map that included several circled areas set deep in the Taos Mountains. There were no markings to explain the intended use of the latter areas, but Upshaw knew they indicated long-abandoned uranium mines. Resting next to the topo map was a manila file filled with documentation as to various means by which to carry on an environmental cleanup of the sites.
“You’ve certainly put a lot of effort into this presentation,” Upshaw finally told the two men who’d made the arduous four-mile drive up a winding mountain road to confer with the tribal leader. He’d already met Freddy McHale, a bald, barrel-chested man of roughly the same age, several times during the past few months. McHale’s colleague, a younger, rusty-haired man who’d been introduced as Pete Trammell, was noticeably shorter than his companion and had said only a few words since Upshaw had invited them into his house. McHale, on behalf of Global Holdings Corporation, ran the gambling operations at the Roaming Bison Casino, a co-venture with the Rosqui Tribal Council located an hour’s drive south of Taos on the outskirts of Santa Fe. McHale had told Upshaw that Trammell was GHC’s Ancillary Project Manager. The widowed tribal leader hadn’t bothered to ask for a translation as to what such a job might entail.
McHale smiled amicably. “I know we’ve already hashed out most of this a few times and gone over some crude drawings,” he said, his voice tinged with what seemed to Upshaw more of an Eastern European accent than the Irish brogue his name would suggest. “But I thought maybe if you had a clearer picture of what we had in mind you’d see this as a win-win deal. We’re not only offering you a way to increase your pueblo’s per capita income by at least a hundred percent, we’re also committed to cleaning up uranium sites that, if they existed outside the reservation, would likely be declared EPA supersites due to the risk of toxic exposure.”
“I can’t help thinking there has to be some kind of ulterior motive on your part,” Upshaw replied. “All this altruism about cleaning up the uranium sites… I’m sorry, but something about it doesn’t ring true.”
“It’s not just altruism,” McHale explained. “As you know, we don’t just run the casino at Rosqui, we’re also in charge of the nuclear waste site there. We have a sound track record on that front, and it’d be easy enough for us to secure funding to add facilities for dealing with your uranium.”
“It’s business,” Trammell piped in.
“And a successful one,” McHale went on. “If you don’t believe us, ask any of your colleagues at Rosqui. They get a cut of both ventures, just as you would here.”
“You’ve presented this same argument every time we’ve met,” Upshaw said, “and when I counter with my position, I can almost see the words going in one ear and out the other.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” McHale’s voice had begun to lose its tone of cordiality. The shift was not lost on Upshaw, but he pretended not to notice.
“Rosqui Pueblo is a bit fonder of Red Capitalism than we are here in Taos,” the tribal president went on. “Here, we’re already a bit uncomfortable with what little gambling we offer at our small casino. We have, if you’ll pardon the pun, certain reservations about expanding things any further. As for the uranium mines, they’re located far from any inhabited areas, and we’ve already conducted tests to confirm that the tailings are in no danger of leaching into the watershed. The way I see it, it’s a case of ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’”
“Are you sure you speak for the majority of your people?” McHale asked. “Not to mention your fellow members of the tribal council?”
Upshaw narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the businessmen.
“I’m in charge of this pueblo,” he said coldly. “I hope I’m wrong in sensing that you’ve been trying to wheel and deal behind my back.”
“We’ve requested all along that we be allowed to make a presentation to the entire council,” McHale countered. “You keep refusing. Why is that?”
“I have my reasons.”
“It’s because you know they’d probably back our offer.”
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“There’s one way to find out.”
“If this were a poker game, I’d call your bluff,” Upshaw said. “As it is, however, I’ll merely advise you that if I find out you’re trying to make an end run around my authority, there will be consequences.”
“Are you threatening me?” McHale asked.
“I’m a man of action,” Upshaw replied. “I don’t bother with threats.”
“Neither do we,” Trammell snapped.
McHale shot Trammell an angry glance. Chastened, the shorter man diverted his gaze and fell silent. McHale turned back to Upshaw.
“Seats on the governing council are elected positions,” he said. “As is the council presidency.”
“I’ve been reelected by a landslide every time I’ve run for another term,” Upshaw said. “I don’t see that changing.”
“Times have changed, Walter, and not for the better. Your people are struggling to make ends meet like everyone else. If they see a way to better their lot, are you certain they’ll be willing to stick with the status quo?”
“I’ll thank you not to address me by my first name, Mr. McHale,” Upshaw said. “We’re getting nowhere here and I have some other matters to attend to, so I would suggest that we call it a day.”
McHale stared at Upshaw a moment, then sighed and began to gather up his presentation materials. Trammell grabbed a large leather portfolio propped next to the table and held it open so McHale could slip the materials inside.
“I have computer copies of all this,” McHale told Upshaw. “I’ll send them to you and maybe once you’ve had a chance to look everything over more thoroughly—”
“There’s no need for that,” Upshaw interrupted. “I’ve already committed to a small expansion of our existing casino with our current partners. That’s as far as I intend to see things go.”
McHale stopped what he was doing. His neck flushed crimson and the rage in his eyes was matched by the coldness in his voice. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me,” Upshaw said evenly. “I’d prefer to stick with the people I’m already working with. Nothing personal.”
“If you’ve already made up your mind,” McHale said, “then why did you have us come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere and make a presentation?”
“I wanted to see your reaction,” Upshaw said calmly. “You really need to work on your poker face, Mr. McHale.”
McHale checked himself and slowly continued putting away the drawings and files. By the time he’d finished, he’d regained his composure. He took the portfolio from Trammell and tucked it under one arm, then extended the other to Upshaw.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do business, Mr. Upshaw, but thank you for your time.”
Upshaw stared at McHale’s hand but refused to shake it. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sure you can find your way out.”
McHale pulled his hand back. Trammell was already headed for the door. McHale followed him. A few minutes later they were back in McHale’s customized Hummer, heading back down the long service road linking Upshaw’s home with the existing casino, a small converted lodge visible two miles below on a plain at the foot of the mountain.
“He knows something,” Trammell said, speaking, not in English but in his native Russian. McHale nodded, then responded in the same language.
“We’ve had our suspicions he might.”
“We need to consider our contingency plan, then,” Trammell said.
McHale nodded again as he navigated a turn in the road. “We need to step up surveillance on him,” he said. “Tap his phone, hack his computer, tail him. Whatever it takes to find out who tipped him off.”
“It has to be somebody at Rosqui.”
“More than likely,” McHale said. “Keep an eye on his son, too. He’ll factor into this.”
“Orson, too?”
“Absolutely,” McHale replied. “There has to be a way we can kill two birds with one stone here.”
“More than just two,” Trammell said ominously. “And I have a feeling we’ll be killing more than just birds.”
CHAPTER ONE
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
Mack Bolan was twenty minutes into his jog on one of the gymnasium treadmills facing a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the eastern perimeter of Stony Man Farm. Through the window he could see the bare-limbed, regimentally planted poplars surrounding the distant Annex as well as the tip of that building’s storage silo, which outsiders were led to believe contained nothing but wood chips ground up as a byproduct of the Farm’s timber-harvesting venture. In fact, the uppermost cavity of the silo contained not only a concealed array of antiaircraft ordnance but also a bevy of communications antennae and data-link transmitters servicing the cybernetic team operating out of the subterranean bunker facility located one floor down from the lumber mill. Two blacksuits stationed amid the poplars were equally discreet, busying themselves with farm chores, their firearms concealed beneath coveralls and lightweight shirts so as to not give away their primary function, which was to safeguard this, the clandestine headquarters for America’s foremost covert task force. Bolan himself was a key player for the Sensitive Operations Group, having helped found the organization years ago when his War Everlasting had expanded from forays against organized crime to tackling the global threat posed by terrorists, drug cartels and other entities hell-bent on subverting U.S. interests in pursuit of their own self-serving agendas. For the moment, the warrior who’d come to be known as the Executioner was between assignments, but there was already another mission in the offing, and within the hour Bolan expected to be en route to the West Coast to engage once more with the enemy. As always, he planned to be ready for the challenge.
“I figured I might find you here.”
Bolan continued to jog in place as he glanced over at the attractive, blond-haired woman approaching the treadmills. Barbara Price was SOG’s mission controller, but she and Bolan shared a bond that went far beyond their mutual commitment to the Farm’s top-secret charter. A few short hours ago, they’d been in each other’s arms back in Price’s bedroom at the farmhouse, a gentrified structure that helped the Farm present itself outwardly as just another of many upwardly mobile country estates dotting this remote sprawl of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
“I thought I gave you enough exercise for one day, soldier,” Price teased.
Bolan grinned faintly. “I figured I’d tire myself out a little more so I can sleep on the flight,” he replied. They both spoke quietly, barely above a whisper, mindful of several off-duty blacksuits working out with free weights on the other side of the exercise room.
“They’re still refueling the jet,” Price responded. “I just heard from Ironman, though. They’re bogged down on logistics and don’t figure to have their ducks in a row until sometime late tomorrow. So you have the option of laying over in Albuquerque for that convention Cowboy’s attending.”
Ironman was Carl Lyons, field leader for Able Team, SOG’s go-to commando squad for countermanding threats to the U.S. usually on American soil. The three-man team had been deployed a few days ago to Seattle, where it was now closing in on a smuggling ring purported to be running arms across the border in nearby Vancouver. The smugglers were linked to a survivalist sect on file in the Farm databases for actively abetting several purported al Qaeda sleeper cells throughout the Northwest. Able Team was concerned about spreading itself too thin in pursuit of the various leads that had turned up since its arrival, prompting Bolan’s offer to fly out and lend a hand. Intent as he was on tackling the assignment, the Executioner also saw merit in the notion of spending an extra half-day in Albuquerque with John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s resident weaponsmith. Kissinger would be attending a three-day trade show focused on the latest advancements in weaponry and combat gear, and Bolan was intrigued by some of the breakthroughs Kissinger had told him about. Anything that would help give him and his fellow commandos an edge over the enemy, Bolan felt, was always worth a firsthand look.
He switched off the treadmill and slowed his jogging in time with the decreasing churn of the rubberized belt beneath his feet.
“Let’s play it by ear,” he told Price. “It’ll be a good eight hours before we’re in New Mexico. A lot could happen between now and then.”
Price smiled faintly. “The voice of experience.”
Bolan nodded. “One thing I’ve learned about the enemy is that their game plan can change on a dime,” he said. “We need to be able to do the same.”
CHAPTER TWO
Taos, New Mexico
An early-evening spring breeze rustled the leaves as Petenka Tramelik, aka Pete Trammell, stole his way through a stand of cottonwoods surrounding the estate of Alan Orson. With him was Vladik Barad, a fellow member of Vympel, the special-operations arm of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR. There was a faint chill in-air thanks to an approaching storm front that was already soaking central New Mexico. Tramelik figured they had time to carry out their mission before the rain came. Afterward, he would welcome the downpour, as it would help to obscure any boot prints he and Barad might leave along the dirt trail leading to Orson’s spread, a five-acre parcel located north of Taos near the small New Mexico town’s municipal airport.
Both men had staked out the property the three previous nights, establishing Orson’s routine as well as that of Walter Upshaw’s estranged thirty-year-old son, Donny, who served as Orson’s groundskeeper and lived in a one-room guest cottage located near the converted horse stables Orson used as his primary work space. If he stuck to his routine, Orson would be in the stables for another few minutes before retiring to the main house. Donny, on the other hand, had once again gone to bed shortly after sundown and, even though the cottage was dark, Tramelik could see that Upshaw had closed only the screen door on his front porch. The Russian figured the door would be unlocked; if it wasn’t, he knew it would be an easy matter to jimmy it open and still have time to get to Donny before the other man could respond.
A commuter jet had just lifted off from the airfield’s lone runway and Tramelik watched through the trees as it droned its way into the night sky. Within moments the plane disappeared into the same thick, swollen clouds that had already snuffed out the moon and all but a handful of stars. The darker the better, Tramelik thought as he slipped on a pair of purple latex gloves and pulled up the collar of his black jacket. His straggly reddish hair, uncut since he and Frederik Mikhaylov had met with Upshaw’s father the previous week on behalf of Global Holdings Corporation, was tucked beneath a dark stocking cap, but a few loose strands dangled to his shoulders. Barad, a shorter, stone-faced man with short-cropped light brown hair, was dressed similarly to Tramelik. As he donned his gloves, he whispered, “Ready?”
Tramelik nodded, thumbing open his cell phone. He quickly text-messaged two more SVR agents waiting in a Dodge Caravan parked back on the dirt road linking Orson’s property with a handful of other estates scattered between the airport and Rio Grande Gorge. It was a short message, two asterisks indicating that he and Barad were in position and about to make their move.
Once they cleared the trees, the two operatives split up. While Barad stole his way toward the stables, Tramelik circled a long-abandoned horse track and approached the guest cottage, nestled beneath a cottonwood less than forty yards from his colleague’s target destination. The sound of their footsteps was masked not only by the breeze stirring through trees but also the melodic tingling of several wind chimes hanging from the eaves above the bungalow’s front porch. As he drew closer, Tramelik reached into his jacket and removed a secondhand police sap he’d bought two days ago at a pawnshop in Espanola. A flat steel bar and lead-weighted striking head were encased by heavily stitched black leather, making the weapon as potent as it was compact. Tramelik also had a Glock 17 9 mm pistol tucked in a web holster beneath his coat, but he had no plans to use it. For the moment, he only wanted to render Upshaw unconscious.
Tramelik was within ten feet of the bungalow when there was a sudden commotion next to the garage. When he reached the porch, the Russian crouched alongside its wooden steps and stared across the grounds. Barad had taken similar cover behind a water well near the stables. Fifty yards beyond the well a trio of coyotes had emerged through brush on the far side of the driveway and staged a raid of their own on a large garbage Dumpster heaped high with refuse. One of the creatures had already leaped up into the bin and begun tearing at a half-filled plastic trash bag. When a second coyote made the same leap and joined in the foraging, the smallest predator circled the Dumpster, yipping in frustration at its inability to join the festivities.
Tramelik was trying to figure a way to deal with the situation when he was startled by the rattling of a doorknob directly behind him. Glancing up, he saw Donny Upshaw storm onto the porch in his boxer shorts, brandishing a Mossberg 930 shotgun. The thin, long-haired Native American had apparently been roused by the coyotes and seemed equally taken aback by the sight of Tramelik crouched directly in front of him.
Tramelik was the first to react. Acting on reflex, he swung upward with the sap, striking the shotgun’s barrel and diverting a 12-gauge round that would have otherwise turned his head into chowder. Half-deafened by the rifle blast, Tramelik lunged forward, clipping the other man below the waist with enough force to buckle Donny’s knees and send him stumbling headlong down the porch steps. The Mossberg went flying from Upshaw’s grasp and clattered to the ground as he landed hard on his right arm. Before Upshaw could reclaim the weapon, Tramelik pivoted on the steps and swung one leg outward, connecting the steel-toed tip of his right boot with the other man’s jaw. Upshaw slumped to the ground, dazed. Off in the distance, the coyotes had already bounded from the garbage Dumpster and were racing off down the driveway.
Tramelik sprang from the porch, his mind racing. His well-orchestrated plan may have gone awry, but there was still a chance he and Barad could carry out their mission. When Upshaw began to stir, Tramelik rushed over and clippped him across the skull with his sap. Upshaw slumped back to the ground, blood oozing through his scalp where he’d been struck. Tramelik cursed under his breath and dropped the sap, putting a finger to his victim’s wrist. The man still had a pulse.
“Good,” Tramelik murmured. He fished through his pockets and withdrew a penlight, a shoestring and a syringe enclosed in a protective sheath. Once he’d tied the string around Donny’s left biceps, he snapped open the sheath and tested the syringe, squirting a few drops into the night air, then shone the light on Upshaw’s well-scarred inner right elbow. Once he pinpointed a vein, he inserted the needle, injecting enough heroin to ensure that it would be some time before the groundskeeper regained consciousness.
Now it was all up to Barad.
ALAN ORSON WAS SEALING the last of four cardboard shipping boxes set near the doorway leading out of the stables when a call came in on his cell phone. He tapped his transceiver and took the call as he applied a final strip of packing tape. Nearby, Orson’s pet terrier lazed on a foam pad tucked beneath one of several work benches vying for space with storage cabinets and an industrial lathe inside the modified building. All the benches were strewn with tools and various half-built prototypes that Orson hoped would soon add to his list of patented inventions. The Taos native specialized in gadgets for the military and had made millions in recent years off contracts with the Department of Defense. Once he closed a deal for the items he’d just packed in the cardboard boxes, Orson calculated that his fortunes would quadruple, if not more, giving him the option to retire early and enjoy a life of travel and leisure.
“’Lo, Alan,” the caller drawled in Orson’s ear. “It’s Franklin.”
“Hey, Frank.”
Franklin Colt was one of Orson’s longtime poker buddies. They played twice a month, usually at the home of a mutual friend in Santa Fe. It was a long drive for a low-stakes game, but Orson liked the action as well as the camaraderie.
Colt was calling for another reason, however.
“Are we still on for tonight?”
“Sure thing,” Orson said. “I just need to load the truck and take Ranger for a walk and I’ll be on my way. Your friend’s due in at midnight, right?”
“Thereabouts. Turns out he’s got a couple friends flying in with him.”
“I’ll meet you at the airport,” Orson said. “You think those guys might be into playing a little Hold ’Em?”
“Dunno,” Colt told him. “I’ll ask when they get in.”
“Great.” Orson wrapped up the call, then walked over to scratch his terrier behind its ears. “What say, Ranger? A quick lap around the track so you can do your business?”
Ranger seemed in no hurry to leave his bed. Before Orson could try any further coaxing, however, the dog suddenly turned its head and growled low as it stared past the boxes stacked near the door.
“I hear ’em, too,” Orson said. “Easy, boy. Shh.”
Orson flicked off the main overhead lights and moved to the nearest window overlooking the driveway. He parted the blinds and peered out.
“Good, they fell for it,” he whispered.
Orson moved from the window and grabbed a shotgun racked on a wall illuminated by the dull glow of a nearby bench lamp. It was another Mossberg, identical to the one he’d bought for his groundskeeper a few days earlier after coyotes had killed his other terrier.
“Payback time, Ranger,” Orson told his dog.
The inventor was thumbing the rifle’s safety when he heard the other Mossberg fire. Ranger bounded from his bed and began to yelp. Orson ventured back for another look out the window. The coyotes had fled the Dumpster and were scurrying down the driveway. None of them appeared to have been hit.
“He missed ’em!”
Orson headed for the doorway. Ranger beat him there, still barking,
“Sit!” Orson commanded. When the dog obeyed, he gently pulled it back from the door. “Don’t worry, if I get those critters in my sights they’re toast.”
The bespectacled inventor slipped outside and was closing the door behind him when he detected movement to his immediate right. Turning, he caught a brief glimpse of someone pointing a gun at his head. It was an image he would take with him to his grave.
THE MOMENT HE SAW Orson drop at Vladik Barad’s feet, Petenka Tramelik made a quick call on his cell phone.
“It’s done,” he whispered. “Get up here, quick!”
Tramelik was slipping the phone back in his pocket when Barad jogged over, holding the small Raven Arms MP-25 he’d just used on Orson. “Those damn coyotes almost ruined things.”
“Never mind that,” Tramelik said. “Give me a hand.”
Barad stuffed the handgun in his waistband, then took hold of Donny Upshaw’s ankles. Tramelik grabbed the groundskeeper by the armpits and together they hauled him across the grounds to the stables. Ranger was barking wildly behind the closed door. Once they’d set Upshaw on the ground a few yards from Orson, Barad drew the Raven again and threw the stable door open. The terrier backed away momentarily, then was about to charge when Barad put a bullet through its chest, dropping the dog in its tracks.
“There’s been enough racket here without having to listen to that,” he told Tramelik.
Tramelik nodded. “It’ll be a nice touch once we’re finished. Let’s do it.”
Upshaw had begun to groan slightly but was still unconscious when Barad crouched beside him and put the Raven in the groundskeeper’s right hand, then clasped his own hand over it and guided Upshaw’s index finger onto the trigger. Tramelik helped Barad aim the weapon at Orson, who lay on his side facing them, blood draining from his left temple where he’d been shot.
“Okay, Donny,” Tramelik whispered to Upshaw. “Put one through his heart for good measure.”
Barad gently pressed his index finger against Upshaw’s and the Raven fired once again. Orson’s body stirred slightly as it absorbed the round.
Far down the driveway the men heard the crunch of tires on gravel. It was the Dodge Caravan, heading up toward the garage with its lights out.
“I already got his keys,” Tramelik told Barad. “Get Orson’s, then we’ll wrap things up here so we can go take care of the chief.”
CHAPTER THREE
Antwerp, Belgium
Evgenii Danilov thanked his valet for bringing him the evening edition of the International Tribune and took the paper to his study, a lavish room that, like much of the small centuries-old castle, had been painstakingly restored to its medieval origins. Through the large stained-glass window he could see night falling over his secluded upscale neighborhood. It had snowed earlier, and downhill from Danilov’s two-acre front lawn there was still a light frosting on Grote Steenweg, the ancient Great Stone Road that had once been the main thoroughfare linking Antwerp and Brussels. This stretch of the road had been historically presevered every bit as much as Danilov’s home and strategically planted trees blocked his view of neighboring homes as well as any other sign of modern civilization.
There were times, like now, when Danilov could stare out the window and imagine himself transported back to the age of his forefathers, specifically Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan, one of Europe’s greatest military commanders and mentor to Frederick the Great, whose Prussian Empire included the land upon which this, one of Danilov’s six homes, stood. Over the past fifty years the silver-haired St. Petersburg native had carved out a financial empire of his own that was impressive in its own right. But for all his success, to Danilov the world of commerce, in the end, didn’t hold quite the same allure as military or political conquest. Yes, he’d made a lifetime of negotiating shrewd investments, but how could that compare with the visceral passion his ancestral hero had to have taken with him to the battlefield when crushing Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Zenta? If he had it all to do over, Danilov wouldn’t have bought his way out of military service, because in the years since, in his heart of hearts, he’d come to know that his greatest yearning was to be more like his namesake: a true warrior.
Little wonder, then, that while known to the world as the billionaire founder and CEO of Global Holdings Corporation, Danilov’s preferred renown was that of a covert financial backer of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. It was a position that allowed him, without fanfare, to be a party to decisions geared toward returning his motherland to a state of global prominence surpassing even that of Frederick the Great’s empire or the once-formidable juggernaut that had been the Soviet Union.
It was in this warrior’s state of mind that Danilov turned from the window and eased into his favorite chair facing the fiery hearth that staged a battle of its own, fending off the unseasonal chill outside the castle. The financier read with fervor the Tribune’s front-page headlines, many of them devoted to America’s ongoing preoccupation with the forces of radical Islam. The U.S. was still bogged down in Iraq and was repeating Russia’s grand mistake of thinking it could impose its influence in Afghanistan. And these were just two fronts on which Washington was distracting itself. There were also headlines about threats posed by North Korea, Iran and China. Danilov had to turn to the fourth page before he came across any mention of U.S. concern over Russia, and that was with regards to Moscow targeting missiles at Eastern Europe. As it had been for some time, there was no mention in the entire paper that America so much as considered the idea that its one-time greatest rival might be silently working on the means by which to launch a preemptive strike that would make the horrors of 9/11 seem tame by comparison. And the notion that such a blow might be dealt from within the United States’s own boundaries rather than by way of long-range missiles? Danilov felt certain the powers-that-be in Washington were far more wary such an attack would be instigated by al Qaeda than on orders from Moscow.
Next to Danilov’s chair was a large antique globe resting on a pivot stand that allowed it to be spun or tilted at a variety of angles. When purchasing it, the selling point for the Russian, besides its exacting geographic detail, was the fact that it was not divided into countries in a way that would have made it obsolete every time some fledgling nation won its independence or borders were redrawn by some existing power. As such, when he slowly rotated the globe until the United States came into view, he had to guess as to the exact whereabouts of New Mexico, where he and the SVR had elected to carry out their long-range plan to do what the latest economic downturn had failed to do: bring America to its knees. To some, the desert sprawl of the Southwest may have seemed an unlikely place from which to stage such a grand scheme, but Danilov found the location not only ideal, but fitting. After all, it was in New Mexico that the U.S. had finalized tests for the Manhattan Project and ushered the world into the age of nuclear weapons. What better place for Russia to create a trove of warheads that could be put to use without having to contend with the multibillion-dollar measures the U.S. was committing itself to as a defense against long-range attacks.
The groundwork had already been laid when Danilov, with the help of SVR agents, had fabricated the scandal that had led to the removal of the Rosqui Tribal Council’s previous partners at the Roaming Bison Casino as well as the reservation’s long-running nuclear waste facility. When Global Holdings had subsequently moved in to fill the void, Danilov had taken care to orchestrate things so that it appeared that his corporation was interested primarily in gaming operations and would be taking over the waste facility with some reluctance. In the years since, GHC’s public-relations arm had followed this cue and shone a bright light on the casino and its resort amenities while steering focus away from the storage of spent fuel rods and other radioactive waste. Likewise, the late-night construction of ancillary bunkers in the mountains flanking the waste plant had been every bit as secretive as the intended use of the new structures. The new sites would be completed within the year, at which point all that would be needed was a more viable source of uranium than that coming from the fuel rods to carry out what Danilov had convinced SVR to call Operation Zenta, in honor of the battle in which his famed namesake had lost only five hundred men while slaying thirty thousand Turks.
All had gone well with the project until the past week, when the SVR team in New Mexico had faced a string of setbacks. First had been Taos Pueblo President Walter Upshaw’s refusal to accept a partnership with GHC, thereby foiling—at least temporarily—the SVR’s hope to secure uranium from the tribe’s long-abandoned mines. Then there had been the matter of Alan Orson, the Taos geophysicist they’d been lobbying to help develop a quicker means by which to process mined uranium into weapons-grade plutonium. Orson had been courted with the understanding he would be helping GHC conduct a feasibility study for using the uranium as a nuclear power source, but the inventor had balked, ironically out of fear that his work might somehow fall into the wrong hands.
At the time he turned down GHC’s offer, there had been no indication that he had any suspicions about the organization, but over the past few days it had come to light that he was friends with Roaming Bison security officer Franklin Colt, who had apparently come upon some as-yet-unknown evidence of GHC’s ulterior agenda at the reservation. Colt had gone to Upshaw with his findings and the fear was that Orson had been brought into the loop, as well. Left unchecked, it was a security breach that could well undermine Operation Zenta, but Danilov had been assured by his point man in New Mexico, Frederik Mikhaylov, that all three men—Upshaw, Orson and Colt—were about to be taken out of the equation, with the bonus of the SVR getting its hands on not only Orson’s research data on uranium processing but also a handful of invention prototypes, some of which could be put to good use by the Russian army as well as its intelligentsia. In fact, before retiring for the evening Danilov expected to receive confirmation that the mission had been carried out. Once he got the call, he would breathe a little easier, but, on the whole, he remained optimistic that destiny was on his side and that in the end he and the SVR would prevail.
As he waited for the phone to ring, Danilov stared into the fireplace a moment, then glanced up at the oil portrait of Eugene of Savoy-Carignan hanging over his mantelpiece. In the portrait, the wild-haired military strategist stared out with a look that Danilov normally found to be expressionless. This night, however, he fancied that in his forefather’s eyes he could see a glimmer of approval. Moreover, he wanted to think that if the portrait could talk, Eugene would be telling him, Well done, Evgenii.
CHAPTER FOUR
Albuquerque, New Mexico
“Any luck?” John Kissinger asked his friend Franklin Colt.
Colt shook his head as he slipped his cell phone back in his pocket.
“He’s still not picking up,” he said. “Must be all this rain has things backed up on the highway.”
“I guess we can stick around awhile and wait for him.” Kissinger glanced over at Jack Grimaldi, the Stony Man pilot who’d flown him to Albuquerque along with Mack Bolan. The Executioner stood a few yards away, his back turned to the others, cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Fine by me,” Grimaldi said, adjusting the brim of his baseball cap in preparation for stepping out into the rain. The four men stood outside the main terminal at Albuquerque International, an overhang shielding them from the drizzling remains of a downpour that had left pools of water on the sidewalk and out in the traffic lanes separating the airport from the outdoor parking lot. The Stony Man warriors had arrived nearly an hour earlier and deplaned on the runway, where, thanks to arrangements made by Barbara Price, an airport police officer had picked them up in a shuttle cart and brought them around to the front of the terminal, allowing them to bypass security screenings that would have turned up the small cache of weaponry and ammunition they’d brought with them. Colt had been out on the sidewalk waiting for them.
“No, let’s go ahead and get you guys checked in,” Franklin told the others. “I left a message for Al to catch up with us at the hotel. It’s just down the road and he’s got a room there, too.”
“Works for me,” Kissinger said.
Bolan rejoined the others once he was off the phone. After Kissinger filled him in, the Executioner replied, “There’s been a change in plans on our end, too. Seattle’s off. I’ll give you the details later.”
Colt grinned knowingly. “I’ve got a better idea,” he suggested. “Why don’t I go get the car and swing by to pick you up? That’ll give you time to debrief…or whatever it is you guys call it.”
“Appreciate it,” Bolan told Colt.
“I told John I’ve got a little intrigue of my own going on at the reservation,” Colt countered. “Maybe at some point we can swap stories.”
The crossing light changed before the Stony Men could reply. As Colt headed out into the rain and sidestepped puddles on his way to the parking lot, Kissinger turned to his colleagues.
“He was kidding,” he told them. “He knows what I do, and who I do it with, isn’t up for discussion.”
“I figured as much,” Bolan said.
“Any idea what he meant about the reservation?” Grimaldi asked.
“Not sure,” Kissinger said. “He mentioned it when we first spoke but all he said was that things were a little hinky there. Probably something at the casino.”
“He seems like a straight-up guy,” Bolan said.
“Franklin’s the best,” Kissinger said. “I still can’t believe we fell out of touch for so long.”
Years ago, Kissinger and Colt, a full-blooded Rosqui Indian, had worked together as field agents for the DEA and forged a strong friendship. Kissinger had saved Colt’s life during a drug raid a few months after they’d partnered up, and Colt had returned the favor less than a year later, taking a few rounds while shoving his colleague out of the line of fire during a botched undercover operation.
The wounds had been severe enough to place Colt on extended medical leave, and though Kissinger had initially made a point to keep tabs on the other man’s recuperation, as time passed and Kissinger’s shift into covert operations demanded more secrecy, their contact had become sporadic and, as often happened with even the best of friends, eventually the men had drifted apart. More than a dozen years had slipped away before Kissinger sought to reestablish contact. With help from Stony Man’s cybercrew he’d been able to track Colt down to the Rosqui reservation north of Santa Fe, where he worked graveyard shift as a security officer for Roaming Bison Casino, one of several tribal-owned resorts located just off the major interstates running through New Mexico.
After a two-hour long-distance phone conversation, Colt had suggested a face-to-face reunion. Kissinger had been all for it and volunteered to fly out to Albuquerque, where he figured he could squeeze in some business for the Farm by attending the city’s annual New Military Technologies Expo. Kissinger had mentioned that his present government work was classified, but Colt had assumed it had something to do with Cowboy’s fascination with firearms and weapons systems. He’d suggested that Kissinger meet his poker buddy Alan Orson, who was driving in from Taos to run an NMT booth featuring several of his latest inventions. Kissinger was already familiar with some of Orson’s patents and looked forward to seeing what else the inventor had up his sleeve. Should Orson have something worth adding to the Farm’s arsenal, Kissinger knew SOG had the funding—and clout—to get first crack at putting any invention to use. For the moment, however, those considerations would have to wait on Orson’s arrival from Taos.
As they waited for Colt to pick them up, Grimaldi asked Bolan, “So, what’s up with Seattle?”
“Canada beat us to the punch,” Bolan explained. “I didn’t get the details, but apparently CSIS staged a couple preemptive raids across the border. They turned up grenade launchers and plastic explosives in a shipment of machinery parts earmarked for some retrofitting business in Takoma.” CSIS was the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
“‘Retrofitting’ my ass,” Kissinger said.
Bolan and Grimaldi had their backs to the airport traffic lanes but Cowboy was facing the other way and, glancing over their shoulders, he could see Colt cross the street to the outdoor parking area. When they’d spoken on the phone, Franklin had boasted about the restoration work he’d done on a vintage 1969 Chevy Nova, and Kissinger could see the muscle car out in the parking lot, its yellow, laquered coat almost gleaming in the rain.
“Sounds like they shut down the suppliers,” Grimaldi told Bolan, “but what about the guys that stuff was being sent to?”
“That’s still on Able’s plate,” Bolan said. “They were already working the Takoma angle and figure they can follow through on their own.”
“If that’s the case, it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a minivacation,” Grimaldi said. “Sweet. Maybe we can get in that card game Colt was talking about.”
“Hang on, guys,” Kissinger murmured, eyes on the parking lot. “Something’s not right.”
Across the roadway, Colt had made his way past a handful of parked cars and was circling around his Nova when he was intercepted by two men bounding out of an unmarked black panel truck parked next to him. Kissinger’s first thought had been that one of the men was probably Alan Orson, but as he watched on, a sudden scuffle broke out between Colt and the others. Bolan and Grimaldi tracked Kissinger’s gaze to the altercation, just in time to see Colt being overpowered and dragged into the panel truck. Even as the other two assailants were clambering aboard, the truck was already backing out of its parking space.
Bolan and Kissinger were on the move. They sprinted into the pickup lane, their eyes on the truck as they signaled for oncoming traffic to stop. A cabbie was slow to respond and had to veer at the last second to avoid running the men down. Slamming on his brakes, the driver fishtailed to a stop, splashing water up past the curb and nearly drenching Grimaldi.
Bolan yanked a 9 mm Beretta 3-R from the shoulder holster concealed beneath his jacket. Kissinger already had his pistol out and both men braced themselves in the middle of the thoroughfare, drawing bead on the panel truck as it crossed the parking lot. There were too many innocent bystanders in the way, however, forcing the men to hold their fire. As traffic backed up in front of them, a number of motorists began pounding their horns. Bolan ignored the bleating as well as the cursing of the cab driver. He shouted to Grimaldi, “Get us some wheels!”
“On it!”
As Bolan and Kissinger broke their firing positions and crossed the roadway, Grimaldi slammed his fist on the taxi’s hood before its driver could pull away. The cabbie turned and glared when the Stony Man pilot tugged open the front passenger door.
“I need to borrow this,” Grimaldi said.
“Like hell,” the cabbie snapped.
Grimaldi produced his M1911 pistol and aimed it at the driver.
“I don’t have time to argue,” he said. “Get out! Now!”
The cabbie’s anger quickly morphed into fear. He put the taxi in Park and bailed out into the rain. Grimaldi tossed in his overnight bag, along with the totes Bolan and Kissinger had left on the curb. He was circling around to the driver’s side when a security officer raced out of the baggage terminal, his gun drawn. It wasn’t the cop who’d picked them up on the runway, and he had obviously quickly jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“Hold it right there!” he shouted at Grimaldi.
“Federal agent!” Grimaldi shouted back, taking the risk of reaching into his shirt pocket for the certified Justice Department badge he and his fellow commandos routinely carried while on assignment. SOG Director Hal Brognola was officially entrenched with Justice, ensuring that even though the badges were issued under aliases they would hold up under scrutiny. Given the circumstances, however, Grimaldi wasn’t about to wait around for clearance. He pointed at the racing panel truck and bellowed, “We’ve got a hostage situation!”
The officer paused, which was all the time Grimaldi needed to scramble behind the wheel and slam the taxi into gear. Raising a rainwater fantail, the pilot veered into traffic, nearly sideswiping a slow-moving Honda as he crossed lanes and plowed his way through a gap between two of several sand-filled steel drums separating northbound traffic from vehicles heading south, away from the airport. A shuttle bus in the oncoming lane swerved to one side to avoid colliding head-on with Grimaldi as he wrestled the taxi’s steering wheel, foot still on the gas, bounding over the far curb before completing a U-turn and aligning himself with southbound traffic. Up ahead, Bolan and Kissinger had reached the sidewalk and were firing at the panel truck, which had just smashed through a swing arm at the pay station and burst out of the parking lot. The truck clipped a passing Cadillac and forced the luxury car off the road into a curbside planter. Bolan and Kissinger aimed low for the truck’s tires but the getaway vehicle veered wildly on the rain-slicked asphalt and proved an elusive target.
Grimaldi sped forward, then pulled to a stop alongside his colleagues. Bolan and Kissinger piled in, slamming fresh cartridges into their weapons.
“Stay on ’em!” Kissinger shouted.
“I aim to,” Grimaldi replied. “Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls!”
The Stony Man pilot floored the accelerator. The taxi’s wheels spun in place a moment, then gained traction and hauled the vehicle forward, past the disabled Cadillac.
The chase was on.
BY THE TIME THE panel truck had left the parking lot, Franklin Colt’s abductors had already stripped him of his cell phone and hog-tied him by the wrists and ankles with duct tape. There were no seats in the rear of the truck, and Colt lay pinned against the cold metal floor, his captors kneeling on either side of him. They’d pulled a stocking cap down over his head, as well, and there was little he could see through the tight-woven fabric. He assumed the men were hoping to conceal their identities, but during the brief skirmish in the parking lot he’d gotten a good look at them. He didn’t know them by name, but he recognized them from the casino. They were regulars who spent most of their time at the roulette and blackjack tables. Franklin suspected they were more than mere players, however, given their burly physiques and the frequency with which they would wander off to the main bar to meet with one of the pit bosses whenever they went on break. Judging from their accents, he figured the thugs, like most of the casino’s executive personnel, were either from Eastern Europe or Russia. He had a good idea, as well, as to why they’d taken him hostage.
“Who are those other men?” one of the captors bellowed at him over the drone of the truck’s engine.
“Friends,” Colt muttered, wincing as he spoke. He’d been struck in the face several times and his jaw was throbbing. He could taste blood in his mouth and traced the source to a split on his lower lip.
“Friends with guns!” the captor shouted. “Who are they working for?”
“I don’t know!”
Colt groaned as his interrogator kneed him sharply in the ribs.
“What did you tell them?”
“What would I tell them?” Colt countered, feigning ignorance. “What’s this all about anyway? What do you want with me?”
“You know!” his captor shouted. “Don’t pretend you don’t!”
“I’m just a res Indian who minds his own business,” Colt protested.
“We know better! If you know what’s good for you you’ll start—”
The interrogation was cut short when one of the truck’s tinted rear windows imploded, shattered by a 9 mm slug that lodged itself in the headrest of the front passenger seat. The driver responded by jerking the steering wheel, throwing Colt’s abductors off balance. One of them caromed off the side of the truck while Colt’s inquisitor fell sprawling alongside him.
“We can worry about him later!” the other man shouted. “We need to take care of these people, whoever they are! They’re after us in a goddamn taxi!”
The inside of the truck suddenly reverberated with the deafening reports of an assault rifle. Colt assumed that Kissinger and his friends were the ones being fired at. His concern for their safety was mixed with no small measure of admiration at how quickly they’d responded to his abduction.
Cowboy hasn’t lost his chops, Franklin thought to himself.
The second thug let loose with another autoburst, then cursed.
“Where’s our backup?” he roared.
WHEN COLT HAD BEEN taken captive, his abductors had made a point to take his car keys and kick them just beneath the Nova’s chassis near the left front wheel. Moments after the panel truck had pulled out and sped toward the pay station, SVR operative Viktor Cherkow had abandoned his surveillance post outside the baggage claim area across the street and jogged past stalled traffic to the parking lot. When he reached the Chevy he stopped and crouched in the rain, pretending to tie his shoes. Once the panel truck had crashed through the barrier and sped into the street, Cherkow grabbed the stray keys and let himself into Colt’s Nova. The plan had been for him to go through the vehicle for evidence Colt might have brought along with him, but when he saw Bolan and Kissinger fire at the panel truck and then take up chase in a passing taxi, the Russian decided the search would have to wait.
The moment he keyed the ignition and heard the Nova’s rebuilt V-8 rumble to life, Cherkow smiled to himself. He wasn’t sure how much horsepower Colt had harnessed under the hood, but he suspected it was a lot more than whatever would be powering the taxi.
“I’ll catch up soon enough,” he vowed as he revved the engine and shifted into Reverse.
In his haste, Cherkow squealed out of his parking space just as a Mercedes GLK was pulling forward from the space directly behind him. Cherkow cursed as he rammed the SUV, crumpling its front end. The Nova hadn’t been retrofitted with air bags, and the impact threw Cherkow against the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Dazed, the Russian groped at his bruised ribs. Behind him, the other driver rocketed from his vehicle and stormed forward, kicking the Nova.
“Look where you’re going!” he roared. “I just bought this car!”
The man had nearly reached Cherkow when the Russian threw open his door and pointed the MP-446 Viking combat pistol he’d just yanked from his shoulder holster. He fired a single 9 mm round into the other man’s forehead, then slammed the door shut and threw the Nova into first gear. His rear bumper was still snagged to the Mercedes and when the Chevy screeched forward, the steel strip pulled loose and clanged to the asphalt a few feet from where the owner of the Mercedes had fallen, spilling his blood into a growing puddle of rainwater.
Cherkow sped toward the pay station, reaching it just as the parking attendant had charged out to inspect the damage caused by the panel truck. The man dived to one side to avoid being run down when Cherkow raced past the pay booth and quickly veered past the disabled Cadillac so that he could take up pursuit of the taxi. There were no cars between them, and as he eased down on the accelerator, Cherkow quickly began to gain ground. Given the rain-slicked surface, the mobster was forced to toss his gun on the seat beside him and keep both hands on the steering wheel.
“That’s all right,” Cherkow told himself, “I won’t need a gun to take care of them.”
ONE EXIT BEFORE INTERSTATE 25, the panel truck abruptly cut across two lanes of traffic and shot down the ramp leading to University Boulevard. Grimaldi followed suit in the taxi. It would have been a dangerous enough maneuver on dry ashpalt and both vehicles nearly hydroplaned off the road as they took the sharp turn. The taxi, its front hood already scarred by AK-47 rounds, took on more damage as it swerved onto the shoulder and brushed against a guardrail before Grimaldi corrected course and eased back onto the roadway.
“Nice save,” Kissinger told him.
“Yeah, well, I’d stay buckled up if I were you,” Grimaldi responded, keeping an eye on the truck. “I’m sure they’ll keep trying to shake us.”
Bolan was in the backseat, pensive, Beretta at the ready. He’d only fired at the truck once since getting into the taxi, but if Grimaldi could get within closer range, he hoped to get off a few more shots.
At the end of the ramp, the panel truck turned left, heading away from the city. By the time Grimaldi made the same turn, there was nearly a hundred-yard gap between the two vehicles. The rain had begun to pick up, forcing him to peer through the mad thrashing of the windshield wipers. A streak of lightning lit their way briefly as the pursuit continued southward, past an industrial park and the University of New Mexico’s Championship Golf Course. By the time they passed the Rio Bravo intersection, the center median had widened and there was no longer any other traffic to contend with. Grimaldi gave the taxi more gas, quickly gaining on the truck. A quick look in his rearview mirror revealed the flashing lights of a police cruiser turning onto University Boulevard far behind them.
“No guarantee they know we’re the good guys,” Kissinger said.
“Hopefully we’ll get to the truck before they catch up with us,” Grimaldi said. He’d reached an incline leading to a barren stretch of flatland and coaxed the speedometer another ten miles per hour. He was now pushing eighty, and once he crossed over a bridge spanning a railroad trestle he slowly began to close in on the panel truck. They were within thirty yards of it when a face appeared ahead in the rear window Bolan had shot out earlier. Once again, one of Franklin Colt’s abductors raised his assault rifle and pointed it through the opening.
“Incoming!” Kissinger shouted, ducking in the front seat.
Grimaldi eased off the accelerator and tapped his brakes, falling back a few yards. Behind him, Bolan powered down his window and leaned out, rattling off a diversionary burst. The ploy worked. The Stony Man warriors heard the faint throttle of the AK-47, but its rounds flew wide of their mark.
Kissinger righted himself and clenched his pistol, his eyes fixed on the rear of the truck before them. The shooter had pulled away from the shattered window.
“Looks like he’s reloading,” Grimaldi said, flooring the accelerator. “Hang on, I’m going to try to ram them.”
AS THE TAXI BORE down on the truck, another jagged shaft of lightning brightened the desolate terrain. Glancing behind him, Bolan, for the first time, caught a glimpse of Franklin Colt’s Chevy Nova. The muscle car had been traveling with its lights off and had managed to sneak up to within less than twenty yards of the taxi. The police cruiser, by contrast, was still more than a mile away.
“We’ve got company,” Bolan called out to Grimaldi. “Give it all you got!”
Grimaldi spied the Nova in his rearview mirror and cursed. His words were drowned out by the Executioner’s Beretta. Bolan fired through the rear windshield of the taxi, clearing the way for a better shot at the Nova’s driver. Before he could draw bead, however, Viktor Cherkow suddenly flashed on his brights. The raised beams half blinded Bolan and startled Grimaldi, as well. The Stony Man wheelman had closed in to within a few yards of the panel truck, but the Nova had already caught up with him.
There was a sickening crunch as Cherkow beat Grimaldi at his own game plan and slammed into the rear of the taxi. He’d made a point to strike at a slight angle, and the cab immediately began to swerve out of control despite Grimaldi’s best efforts to compensate.
“Not good,” he murmured.
CHAPTER FIVE
The taxi had spun completely by the time it left the road and crashed into a guardrail. Unlike earlier, this time the car didn’t merely glance off the barrier. Instead, it snapped the wooden supports and left the railing in twisted shards as it flipped and went briefly airborne before landing upright on a steep-pitched dirt incline leading to Tijeras Arroyo, a normally dry flood channel that was now swollen with runoff from the day’s rain. The taxi was still turned around and momentum carried it backward downhill into the raging current. For a moment the vehicle bobbed on the surface, surrounded by clots of tumbleweed and other brush dislodged by floodwaters. Then, as water surged through the opened windows and shattered windshield, the taxi slowly sank and had soon disappeared from view.
Back on the roadway the Chevy Nova had also spun completely before coming to a stop. Cherkow groaned in the driver’s seat, his rib cage throbbing from yet another collision with the steering wheel. His right knee had slammed into the dashboard and throbbed with pain, as well. The engine had died and the right front headlight had been crushed, leaving a single beam shining through the rain, illuminating the stretch of road Cherkow had sped along moments before. Far up the hill leading back to the airport, a police cruiser raced downhill toward him, its rooftop lights flashing.
Cherkow grimaced as he retrieved his MP-446 and staggered out into the rain. Behind him, the panel truck had stopped in the middle of the road and was backing up.
“Nice work!” one of his cohorts called out through the shattered rear window.
“It’s not over yet!” Cherkow shouted through the rain. Favoring his sore knee, he hobbled to the break in the guardrail. He was staring down into the arroyo when lightning shone on the brownish floodwaters. Cherkow watched intently as the cab slowly disappeared beneath the floodwaters. He took aim with his autopistol, on the lookout for any trace of the men who’d been inside the vehicle. When no one surfaced, he scanned the dirt slope to see if anyone had been thrown clear. All he could see were the taxi’s tire tracks and a few pieces of sodden litter bogged down in the mud.
Behind Cherkow, the police cruiser reached the flat stretch of the roadway, and its siren shrieked to life above the thunder and harsh patter of rain. The Russian crouched behind the mangled guardrail and waited for the squad car to draw closer. When it came to a stop twenty yards shy of the Chevy, he raised his gun and lined his sights on the officer riding shotgun in the front seat. Behind Cherkow, the gunman in the panel truck took aim as well and let loose with his Kalashnikov.
The cruiser’s front windshield disintegrated and a stream of 7.62 mm NATO rounds took out the cop behind the wheel, obliterating his neck and jaw. The officer riding alongside him, already bloodied by flying glass, was next to die, struck down by a volley from Cherkow’s Viking. The man had partially opened his door and tumbled out of the car, landing on the gleaming asphalt.
Cherkow made certain there was no one else inside the vehicle, then broke from cover and limped back toward the Chevy. Before he could reach the muscle car, the rear doors of the panel truck swung open and the gunman with the AK-47 shouted, “Get in!”
“I want to check for evidence!” Cherkow shouted back.
“There’s no time!” the other man retorted. “There’ll be more cops here any minute!”
Cherkow hesitated, then changed course and staggered to the truck. His comrade helped him aboard, then pulled the doors closed and yelled to the driver, “Let’s go!”
Slowly the truck began to pick up speed. Cherkow dropped to the floor and sat, wheezing slightly as he ran one hand along his right side, trying to pinpoint which of his ribs had been cracked. Franklin Colt lay nearby, still bound and hooded.
“Has he talked yet?” Cherkow asked.
“No,” one of the abductors responded, giving Colt a fierce shove. “But we’ll loosen his tongue once we get to the safe house.”
Cherkow grinned at Colt. “Nice job souping up that car of yours,” he told the prisoner. “You gave me a chance to catch up with your friends. Too bad they won’t be able to help you.”
MACK BOLAN WAS DISORIENTED when he first came to and found himself immersed in the cold, murky water of the flood channel. He was still in the rear of the taxi, secured by his seat belt, slouched at an odd angle. The taxi had tipped onto its side as it dropped below the waterline and, though it had come to a rest at the base of the culvert, the vehicle continued to wobble slightly, jostled by the swift-moving current.
Air, Bolan thought to himself, closing his mouth to keep from taking in any more water. Need more air.
Reaching for his waist, he clawed open his seat belt then let himself float upward to the driver’s side of the taxi, which now lay closest to the surface and had yet to fill with water. When he reached the air pocket, the Executioner gasped, spitting brackish fluid from his lungs. He drew in a few deep breaths and submerged himself once more. There was no partition between the front and back seat, and he was able to quickly reach his fellow commandos. Grimaldi was still out cold behind the steering wheel, but Kissinger had come to and was freeing himself from his seat belt. Bolan reached through the water and tapped him to get his attention, then gestured, first at the air pocket above him, then at Grimaldi. Kissinger nodded and lunged upward as Bolan reached around the Stony Man pilot and unclipped his seat belt, then pulled him clear of the steering wheel.
Kissinger was coughing when Bolan returned to the ever-shrinking pocket of air and hoisted Grimaldi’s head above the waterline. He turned the pilot’s head to one side and expelled water from his mouth, then gently clenched an arm around the other man’s chest and squeezed him, just below the diaphragm. Grimaldi convulsed slightly and sputtered, involuntarily ridding himself of still more ingested water.
“Where are we?” he gasped.
“I’d say hell, only it’s a little wet for that,” Kissinger said, slapping away a small clot of debris floating near his face.
“We’re in some kind of flood channel,” Bolan guessed.
“More like a river,” Kissinger said.
A flash of lightning gave the men a brief glimpse of the water’s surface, which lay only a few yards above them.
“We can get out through the back windshield,” Bolan said. He turned to Grimaldi. “Think you can manage it?”
“I’ll sure as hell try,” Grimaldi said, coughing out the words.
Bolan went first. He drew in another breath, then dropped below the waterline and twisted his body so that when he kicked against the driver’s headrest he could propel himself through the windshield he’d shot out earlier. Once clear of the taxi, he extended his arms and swam to the surface. There, surrounded by floating bits of tumbleweed, he treaded water and fought the current as he looked around him. Uphill to his right was a small bridge spanning the arroyo. He spotted the section of guardrail they’d crashed through and, beyond that, the roadway and the flashing lights of what he assumed was a patrol car. His ears were clogged and a faint din resonated through his skull, but he could also hear the incessant wailing of a siren. By the time Kissinger and Grimaldi had rejoined him, two more sirens were competing with the peals of thunder. Bolan saw a squad car speed across the bridge, heading southward, while yet another cruiser was making its way down the incline leading away from the airport.
“Cavalry to the rescue,” Kissinger muttered as he swam close to Bolan.
Rather than fight the current, the men conserved their strength and allowed the water to carry them away from the road. Slowly they made their way to the culvert’s edge. Bolan’s legs were going numb by the time he reached a point where he could touch bottom. He lumbered up out of the water and collapsed on the muddy embankment, exhausted. Kissinger and Grimaldi straggled ashore soon after, shivering in the rain.
“What now?” Grimaldi asked.
As if in response, the beam of a high-powered searchlight cut a swath through the darkness and fell on the men. Squinting, Bolan glanced uphill and traced the light to a squad car that had pulled to a stop near the break in the guardrail. Two officers had already begun to climb down the embankment, guns drawn. With their weapons still back in the taxi, the Executioner realized they were no longer in a position to give chase to Franklin Colt’s abductors, much less take them on.
“For now,” he told his colleagues, “it looks like we’re going to have to play ball with the locals.”
CHAPTER SIX
Taos, New Mexico
One night every week for eighteen years Walter Upshaw had taught an extension course on Native American Heritage at the University of New Mexico’s Taos facility on Civic Plaza Drive. The tribal leader charged nothing for his services, and the class enrollment fee was underwritten by the Pueblo. The class was always full, made up of local residents as well as tribal members, and there were those cynics who derided Upshaw as using the teacher’s pulpit as a blatant effort to bolster his political clout and presence in the community. Upshaw always denied the claims, insisting that he felt it was important for both his people and the locals to cultivate a better understanding of native customs. Anyone who took the class would have backed him up as they invariably came away with the sense that Upshaw was truly passionate about the history and traditions of his forefathers.
Another part of the TPGC president’s weekly ritual for most of those eighteen years was the short trek to Taos Plaza, where he would settle in at his favorite booth at Ogilvie’s Bar and hold court with fellow teachers, students and anyone else who struck his fancy and would accept an invitation to join in on what would usually be a few hours of lively debate and raconteuring. This particular night, even the torrential downpour and a preoccupation with other matters couldn’t keep Upshaw making his usual after-class visit to the local watering hole. Only two colleagues from the university had decided to brave the elements with him and the bar was less than half-full, but Upshaw still managed to drum up a festive air among the small gathering.
As was his custom, the tribal elder offered to pick up the tab for anyone drinking something other than alcohol. A steadfast teetotaler, all his life Upshaw had bristled at the stereotype of “drunken Indians.” He frowned as well on most other forms of substance abuse, a hard-line stance that had led to an ongoing estrangement from his only son after Donny’s rebellious adolescence had led him to alcoholism and two prison stints, one for DUI and the other for heroin possession. Donny had gone through rehab as a means of shortening his second sentence and had been clean for over five months, but Upshaw had thus far refused to reconcile with his son. There was a part of him that regretted his recalcitrance, especially on nights like this, his son’s fortieth birthday. The sentiment, however, was always dwarfed by Upshaw’s grim memory of the day, almost ten years ago, when his beloved wife, Paulina, had been killed in a head-on collision while riding home from the annual Taos Solar Music Festival. Donny had been behind the wheel and had suffered bruises that were only minor compared to those administered by his father shortly after Upshaw had bailed him out of jail, where Donny had been incarcerated with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Taos being the small town it was, the two men had crossed paths countless times in the years since, but in every instance Upshaw had refused to meet his son’s gaze. During that time, Donny had e-mailed his father even more frequently, begging for forgiveness and making overtures for a renewed relationship, but, as he had with the message Donny had sent him earlier that day, Upshaw’s response had always been to delete the communiqués without so much as reading them.
While this matter weighed somewhat on Upshaw’s mind during the two hours he spent at Ogilvie’s, there was another, more pressing concern lurking behind his convivial facade, and once he’d paid his bill and started to drive home through the remnants of the storm, Upshaw dropped all pretense and brooded about his predicament with the Tribal Governing Council. Over the past few days he’d casually brought up the matter of expanding the casino with other council members and found, much to his dismay, that the majority of them were, at best, lukewarm to his small-scale plans. He’d avoided confronting anyone directly, but the response had confirmed his suspicions that Freddy McHale had indeed been lobbying under the table to secure support for GHC’s proposal to replace the existing structure with a larger facility and allow for a cleanup of the old uranium mines, a move that would entail sharing the land’s mineral rights. Worse yet, there now seemed a good chance that McHale was also right about the ground shifting beneath Upshaw’s political feet. The way things stood, Upshaw feared that if he were to run for reelection this time he might well be defeated. The prospect daunted him, and he was determined to do all he could to avoid such an ignominy.
There was plenty of time before the election, and in his battle to turn the council tide back in his favor Upshaw still had one potent ace up his sleeve. Franklin Colt.
Upshaw knew Colt from the latter’s periodic speaking tours throughout the state where, as a former DEA agent, Franklin spoke at local high schools and reservations about the dangers of drug abuse. It wasn’t in this capacity, however, that Upshaw saw Colt as an invaluable ally but rather the Rosqui native’s position as an officer with the Roaming Bison Casino’s security force. Colt had, over the past few weeks, been privy to a handful of incidents involving suspicious activity at both the casino and the reservation’s controversial nuclear waste facility. Looked at separately, the incidents may have appeared isolated exceptions to GHC’s overall management practices. Placed together, however, there seemed evidence of a pattern of covert activity that went far beyond the realm of profit-skimming and money laundering—alleged crimes that had led to the outster of Global Holdings’ predecessors. Much as he’d been tempted to go to his council members with these suspicions, Upshaw had held back, wary they’d be dismissed as the desperate innuendos of a man who’d do anything to hold on to power. What he needed from Colt was corroboration; hard, solid evidence that would convince the council that GHC was every bit as corrupt as the mafioso figures that had ruled Las Vegas during its early years as a gambling mecca. Earlier in the day Colt had called Upshaw saying he’d finally secured just such evidence and would forward it once he’d run it past a friend working for the government to get his opinion on its viability as a proverbial “smoking gun.”
Much as he looked forward to the revelation, Upshaw was concerned over the one possible concession Colt might demand in exchange for it. In a rueful twist of fate similar to those that drove some of the more compelling tribal legends Upshaw taught in his extension class, Franklin Colt had come to know the tribal leader’s son by virtue of the fact that Donny lived on the property of Alan Orson, one of Colt’s longtime friends. Insofar as the importance of family support had always been a cornerstone to Colt’s speeches about dealing with drug abuse, he’d taken Donny’s side and was insistent that Walter’s forgiveness and support was crucial to his son’s long-term recovery.
Upshaw had given lip service to those pleas, telling Colt he’d consider the advice, but deep in his heart he doubted that he would ever bring himself to take such a step. The way he saw it, nothing he said to his son would bring his wife back from the grave, and Donny’s responsibility for the woman’s death wasn’t something he felt he could sweep under the rug as if it were some small transgression. Colt could name just about any other terms he might want in terms of compensation for divulging what he’d found out about skeletons in GHC’s closet, but for Upshaw, embracing Donny as a prodigal son was a favor he couldn’t willingly oblige.
These thoughts were still sifting through Upshaw’s troubled mind when he turned off the main road leading out of Taos and drove through the reservation, his wipers squeaking across the windshield. Two side roads later he turned a final time and slowed to a stop next to the mailbox situated near the wrought-iron gate guarding the long driveway leading uphill to his mountain home. He pushed the remote clipped to his visor, and the gate began to slowly creak open as he rolled down his window and reached out through the rain to get his mail. He was withdrawing a handful of bills and other correspondence when there was a stirring in the tall bushes growing up just behind the mailbox. Upshaw’s eyes widened with disbelief as the man he knew as Pete Trammell emerged through the shrubbery, drenched from the rain.
“What are you doing here?” Upshaw demanded.
“Your son’s upset that you didn’t send him a birthday card,” Petenka Tramelik replied. “He wanted me to send you a little message.”
With that, Tramelik raised his gloved hand and calmly fired a round from his Raven Arms MP-25, the same weapon Vladik Barad had used to kill Alan Orson.
Upshaw’s head lolled from the impact and the mail fell from his hand. Dead, the tribal leader slipped his foot off the brake and his car slowly eased forward, just missing the still-opening gate. As Tramelik watched on, the sedan continued up the driveway another twenty yards before failing to negotiate the first turn leading into the mountains. Mature cottonwoods grew up along both sides of the road, and the car came to an abrupt stop once it left the driveway and crashed into one of them. The engine died, but Tremalik could still hear its wipers trying to fend off the rain.
The Russian operative jogged to the car and leaned in through the window. Reaching past Upshaw, he ran his hand beneath the dashboard and removed the dime-size homing bug he and Barad had been using to track Upshaw’s movements, as well as any conversations made in the vehicle. Next, Tramelik carefully frisked his victim until he came across the dead man’s cell phone. Pocketing both items, he strode back through the rain to the shrubs he’d been hiding behind and retrieved a small backpack containing a laptop and several other valuables he’d stolen from Upshaw’s mountain home hours ago, before he and Barad had laid seige to Alan Orson’s estate. He tossed in the cell phone, then trampled over the dead man’s mail and made his way back to the turnoff. Farther up the road, Donny Upshaw’s run-down Buick LeSabre was parked on the shoulder just in front of a hedge that had shielded it from his father’s view. Barad was behind the wheel. Donny was still out cold in the backseat.
Tramelik got in front and nodded to Barad, who then started the Buick and pulled back onto the road. Tramelik turned in his seat and reached over, nudging Donny with the Raven’s barrel.
“First Orson and his dog, and now your own father,” Tramelik said disapprovingly. “That’s quite a killing spree, Donny. Something tells me that when you come down off the smack and realize what you’ve done the shame is going to be too much for you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Less than an hour had passed since the Stony Man trio had escaped from the submerged taxi. The three men were back up on the main road, sitting in the rear of a paramedic van that had arrived a few minutes earlier. They’d already had their vitals checked and had changed into dry clothes the EMTs had been instructed to bring along. Miraculously, aside from bruises and a wrenched shoulder suffered by Bolan, the men had been come through their ordeal unscathed. Now, shrouded in thermal blankets, they were waiting for their Justice Department credentials to be verified by the Albuquerque police.
Bolan had warmed up sufficiently. Shedding his blanket, he told the others, “I’m going to see what the holdup is.”
“If they’re passing out hot cocoa I’ll have a double,” Grimaldi said, his teeth chattering.
“Same here,” Kissinger added.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Bolan said.
Outside the van, University Drive had been officially closed off and officers had already taped off a crime-scene area nearly half the size of a football field. The officer standing closest to the van quickly blocked Bolan’s way the moment he stepped down onto the tarmac.
“Sorry, but you need to stay put.”
“We’ve got a friend missing out there,” Bolan countered. “We’d like to do something about it.”
“And we’ve got two dead cops along with another body back at the airport,” the officer said. “Cool your heels.”
Bolan didn’t care for the officer’s attitude but wasn’t about to take issue with it. He remained near the truck, slowly flexing his shoulder. It was stiff and he had a limited range of motion, but he doubted the injury would compromise his ability to resume what he now saw as a bona fide mission. Perhaps the plight of Franklin Colt had little bearing on national security, but given the man’s friendship with a fellow Stony Man warrior, Bolan felt a personal stake in Colt’s fate. And, too, there was the matter of him and his two colleagues barely escaping the grim fate of the two police officers now lying in body bags inside a second paramedic van parked near the squad car that had come under assault while the Executioner was struggling for his life beneath the cold waters of Tijeras Arroyo.
The rain had let up and, although Bolan could see lightning far to the north, the storm had passed Albuquerque. Any thunder accompanying the flashes was muted by the commotion out on the roadway and up overhead, where a police chopper rumbled its way southward, no doubt in pursuit of Colt’s abductors.
Twenty yards from Bolan, homicide detective David Lowe stood next to an unmarked Ford Taurus, a cell phone pressed to one ear. As he wrapped up his call, someone inside the vehicle handed the tall, sallow-faced man the three JD badge IDs belonging to Bolan, Kissinger and Grimaldi. Lowe exchanged a few words with the other man, then strode past the bullet-riddled squad car, issuing instructions to the forensics team going over the vehicle. As he approached Bolan, the detective waved aside the cop guarding the van, then handed over the badges.
“You checked out,” Lowe said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“No offense taken.”
“What exactly is it that a special agent does?” Lowe asked.
“That’s classified,” Bolan said.
Lowe shrugged and let a thin smile play across his equally thin lips. “That’s the party line we got from Washington, too. But we just lost two men on account of whoever it is you’re up against, so I was hoping you could unzip it a little.”
“If I had some information on who killed your men I’d share it,” Bolan replied. “All we know so far is they grabbed a friend of ours at the airport and made a run for it.”
“You’ve already told me that,” Lowe said. “Any idea why they grabbed him?”
Bolan shook his head. “He said there was something going on at the reservation where he works, but at this point there’s no way of knowing if that’s why he was kidnapped.”
“Which reservation?” Lowe asked. “Rosqui?”
“I think that’s the one.”
“There’s definitely a connection, then,” Lowe said. “Why’s that?”
“One of our units just came across the panel truck you described,” Lowe said. “It was parked just off the road near the interstate. No one in it.”
“They switched vehicles,” Bolan guessed.
“Most likely,” Lowe said. “Anyway, the truck was reported stolen earlier tonight from a warehouse three miles from the Roaming Bison Casino. The casino was its last stop, and the driver’s thinking someone must’ve snuck aboard while he was making a delivery.”
“Safe assumption,” Bolan said.
“I’ll make another assumption.” Lowe fixed Bolan with a straightforward gaze. “Since you guys have a finger in the pie, you’ll likely have the option of pulling rank and outflanking us on the investigation front.”
“If the situation dictates.”
“Well, here’s my situation.” Lowe gestured at the second paramedic van. “I knew the men gunned down here tonight. I knew their families, too, and I’ll likely be the one passing along word to the next of kin. Now, if something turns up here that you feel you need to keep off our radar, suit yourself, but anything that involves bringing in the perps that pulled the trigger on those men, I’d like that to be another matter. I want in on that.”
“Understood,” Bolan said, “and if it can be arranged, I’ll see to it.”
“Is that a promise?”
Bolan extended a hand to Lowe. “You have my word.”
Lowe shook Bolan’s hand and told him, “I guess that’ll have to do.”
Glorieta, New Mexico
FRANKLIN COLT SAT IN stony silence as he was driven through the night in what he presumed to be the backseat of some kind of sedan. His kidnappers had transferred him into the vehicle shortly after the exchange of gunfire near Tijeras Arroyo. His sense of time was uncertain, but he felt as if they’d been on the road for at least an hour, and judging from their speed he knew most of that time had been spent on one of the interstates. Even with the stocking cap pulled over his eyes he’d been able to detect city lights for the first twenty minutes, after which the ambient light outside the car had decreased, leading him to believe they were heading north on 1-25 along the largely undeveloped corridor between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. A few minutes earlier he’d sensed the car following a bend in the highway. If his assumption was right, it most likely meant they’d veered away from the capital and were now skirting the southern fringe of Santa Fe National Forest.
As he struggled to remain attuned to his surroundings, Colt found himself distracted by feelings of grief and dread. For most of the ride his captors had been speaking to one another in a foreign tongue, but immediately after the shoot-out they’d made a point to make sure he understood that the men he’d met at the airport had been slain while attempting to come to his rescue. There seemed little reason to doubt their word, and Colt was filled with remorse at the thought that he was responsible for their deaths. What a cruel twist of fate it was to have reestablished contact with John Kissinger only to have their reunion result in his friend’s slaying. Colt hoped for a chance to extract revenge, but given his dire circumstances he knew there was a greater likelihood that he would be the next to die. It seemed equally probable that his death wouldn’t come swiftly. Given the way he’d been questioned moments after his abduction, he knew that his captors had somehow learned that he was looking into illegal activity taking place on the reservation. There would likely be further interrogation once they reached their destination and Colt suspected that torture would likely be involved. If it came to that, he could only hope for a chance to force a struggle that would lead to him being killed outright. More importantly, he hoped that after silencing him his abductors would let the matter go. The last thing Colt wanted was for these savages to turn their sights on his family.
Colt was still mulling over his dilemma when the car turned off the highway onto the first of what turned out to be a series of side roads. For several miles the ride was smooth, but after a series of sharp turns, the car slowed to a crawl and Colt could hear the crunch of gravel under the tires as they made their way along a winding stretch of unpaved roadway. Several times the driver cursed as the car bounded roughly across deep chuckholes concealed by the recent rain. At one point the sedan veered sharply to one side and Colt was thrown against the man sitting beside him in the backseat. The man let out a pained cry and brusquely shoved Colt away, then jabbed him in the side with what felt like the butt of a pistol.
“Watch it!” Viktor Cherkow snarled, speaking in English for the first time in nearly an hour. “I’ve got cracked ribs thanks to that steering wheel of yours!”
During the verbal exchanges between his captors, Colt had gotten the sense that Cherkow was the most short-tempered of the group, and he saw in the Russian’s outburst a chance to bring things to a head before they even reached their destination.
“It’s that idiot driving who knocked me into you!” Colt retorted, leaning back across the seat and elbowing Cherkow in the ribs. “If you want to blame somebody, blame him!”
The Russian howled in agony. Colt was hoping the man would shoot him, but instead Cherkow made do with the butt of his Viking pistol, slamming it against the side of his prisoner’s head, just above the ear. It wasn’t the fatal blow Colt was hoping for. It did, however, flood his field of vision with a bright, sudden flash of light that, just as quickly, gave way to the black void of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mack Bolan stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor of Albuquerque’s El Dorado Hotel and made his way down the hall to room 547. He opened the door with his keycard and entered the two-bedroom suite that had been booked for him and his Stony Man colleagues under their Justice Department aliases. Kissinger and Grimaldi had already checked in and were seated at a table in the dining alcove, half watching cable news on a television set wedged inside a light pine entertainment unit that also included a stereo system and mini-refrigerator stocked with overpriced provisions. The two men had already gone through several packets of mixed nuts and crackers and were now snacking on packaged cookies.
“Orson still hasn’t checked in,” Bolan told them.
Grimaldi grabbed the remote and switched off the television. “Not a good sign,” he said.
“No, it isn’t.” Bolan joined the men and handed out toiletry kits he’d bought at the lobby gift shop to replace those lost to the roaring floodwaters of Tijeras Arroyo. He then gave Grimaldi and Kissinger each a bare-bones replacement cell phone.
“Mine shorted out under water,” he told them. “I figure yours did, too.”
“Thanks,” Kissinger said. “I was going to try mine again once the SIM card dried, but that usually doesn’t work.”
“Any other news?” Grimaldi asked.
“Lowe put out an APB for Orson’s car and has the Taos police on their way to check out his place.”
“There’s still a chance he was just waylaid and’ll show up here,” Kissinger offered.
“True,” Bolan said, “but given what’s happened, we have to consider that he’s somehow tied into all of this.”
“As a target of one of the perps?” Grimaldi wondered.
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough,” Bolan said. “There’s something else. While they were searching the panel truck, they came across a map of the reservation. Colt’s place out in the mountains was marked off.”
“Their next stop?”
“Could be,” Bolan said, “but I think it was more a backup plan in case they didn’t get him at the airport.”
“If they’re looking for something and Colt didn’t have it on him,” Kissinger suggested, “they still might show up there.”
“If that’s the case, I want to be there.”
“Good idea,” Kissinger said. “Colt’s got a wife and kid.”
Bolan nodded. “Lowe’s already called and told her to be on the lookout. She has some neighbors coming by until I get there. I want to see if she can shed any light on things, then I want to get her to a safe house. Lowe’s off tracking down the families of the cops that were killed, but he’s arranged for the tribal police to chip in.”
“The reservation’s probably out of his jurisdiction anyway, right?” Grimaldi said. “They usually have some kind of sovereignty thing going on.”
“That, too,” Bolan said.
“Well, we’re cleaned up and ready to roll,” Kissinger offered. “I don’t know Colt’s wife, but I’d like to come along.”
“We’ve got a lot going on,” Bolan countered. “It might be better if we split up for now.”
“What did you have in mind?” Kissinger asked.
“Once I change, one of Lowe’s men will take me to the reservation,” Bolan said. “I think somebody should stay here on the chance Orson shows up.”
“Got it,” Kissinger said.
“Good.” Bolan turned to Grimaldi. “Lowe’s also got a crew on the way to the arroyo to fish out the taxi. We’re already cleared to get our things back, no questions asked, but it’d be best if you could be there to keep an eye on things.”
“Will do,” Grimaldi said. “We can probably salvage the guns and ammo but the notebook’s not going to be of much use.”
“We can worry about that later.”
“About Franklin’s wife,” Kissinger interjected. “How much detail did Lowe go into when he talked to her? Does she know the kind of people we’re dealing with?” Bolan nodded.
“What happened at the airport had already been on the news before Lowe called,” he said. “Some of these neighbors coming over are war vets. They’ll be armed, but I’ll still be glad when I get there.”
“Let’s just hope you get there in time,” Kissinger responded.
Bolan nodded gravely. “Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind.”
Glorieta, New Mexico
WHEN HE CAME TO, Franklin Colt found himself bound to a straight-backed wooden chair set in the middle of a small, cold room bare of any other furnishings other than a dim lightbulb shining in a wall sconce near the only doorway. The stocking cap had been removed from his head and through the gaps in the shuttered windows he could see it was still dark outside, but he had no idea how long he’d been out. His skull throbbed where he’d been struck, and he could feel that both his wrists and ankles had been chafed by the duct tape. He was now bound by thick lengths of rope tethering him to the chair. He could also feel a dull pain in his right biceps and figured this captors had to have injected him with something to keep him unconscious. One of the men was in the room with him, a pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers. When he spoke, Colt recognized the voice of the man who’d knocked him out back in the car.
“It’s about time,” Viktor Cherkow complained when he noticed that Colt had come to. “That tranq dose wasn’t all that strong.”
The cut on Colt’s lip had scabbed over but all it took was a faint grimace to reopen the wound and give him a fresh taste of his own blood. He spit it out and demanded, “Where am I?”
Cherkow laughed. “Do you really think I’m about to tell you?”
“Where am I?” Colt repeated.
“What are you, a parrot?” Cherkow squawked derisively and flapped his arms as if they were wings. “Bwawk, bwak! Polly want a cracker?”
Colt fell silent. When he took a deep breath, he felt suddenly nauseous, overcome by a cloying, musklike smell that permeated the stark room. It was a vaguely familiar odor, and Colt soon placed it as the scent of javelinas, boarlike creatures that roamed the outer edges of the pueblo as well as other parts of the state. It wasn’t much of a clue as to his whereabouts, but moments later Colt heard the mournful howl of a train engine as well as the rhythmic clatter of steel wheels rolling across a stretch of rail tracks. The sound was close, less than a mile away. Colt knew there was a train line that paralleled most of the eastern leg of Interstate 25 between Santa Fe and Blanchard. It seemed likely, then, that he was being held somewhere along that fifty-mile route. He had doubts that he would be able to put the information to use, but the knowledge gave him some small sense of empowerment.
Steam rose from a cup of coffee Cherkow held in one hand as he paced the room. As with the others, Colt recognized the Russian from the casino. He was tall and lean, wearing denim jeans and a matching lined jacket. His complexion was pasty, and his jaw was outlined with a thin, well-groomed beard the same dark shade of brown as his close-cropped hair. An equally thin red scar trailed down his right cheek. Colt had seen his share of knife fights over the years and suspected the Russian’s scar had come from a similar skirmish.
Outside, the sound of the train faded, only to be replaced by the persistent drone of an approaching helicopter. Cherkow went to the window and glanced out a moment through the shutters, then turned and ambled back toward Colt.
“We both know you’re going to talk eventually,” he told his prisoner. “Why not save us all a lot of trouble and do it now?”
“I already told your friends,” Colt responded. “I live on the reservation and work at the casino. I just do my job and don’t ask questions, so I don’t know what it is that—”
Cherkow cut Colt off, dashing the scalding contents of his cup into the bound man’s face. Colt let out a cry as the coffee burned his skin and stung his eyes. The Russian wasn’t finished. He took a quick step forward and raised his right leg, planting his foot against Colt’s chest. With all his might, he thrust the leg outward. Colt’s feet swung up into the air as the chair tipped and fell backward, taking him with it. His head struck the hardwood floor and he saw once more a cluster of fast-moving stars, but this time he remained conscious. The pain inside his skull magnified, however, brimming his eyes with involuntary tears. The floorboards beneath him shuddered faintly as the helicopter set down, seemingly less than a few dozen yards away. A few seconds later, the copter’s rotors fell silent and the floor went still.
Looming over Colt, Cherkow withdrew the Viking pistol from his waistband. He leaned over and pressed the gun’s cold barrel against Colt’s forehead.
“Here’s something for you to think about,” Cherkow said coldly. “We know where you live. We know your wife is at home with that new baby of yours. If you won’t talk, maybe she will.”
Colt froze in terror, his worst fear realized.
“Leave my family out of this!” he said. Staring past the barrel into Cherkow’s cold gray eyes, Colt could see that he was appealing to the conscience of someone who had none.
“That’s up to you, now, isn’t it?” Cherkow said. “Which kind of hero do you want to be? The kind who thinks there’s something noble about keeping silent or the kind that puts his family first?”
Colt was coming to grips with Cherkow’s ultimatum when the door swung inward and another of his captors entered. The other man shouted angrily at Cherkow, again in a language with which Colt was unfamilar. Cherkow shouted back but pulled the gun from Colt’s head and stood upright, facing off with the other man. They continued to argue briefly, but Colt had no way of knowing what they were talking about. Several times, however, he heard a word that was all too familiar. A name.
Orson.
Colt’s heart sank anew as he realized something far more ominous than heavy rain or slow traffic may have prevented his friend from showing up at the airport. Had these men killed Orson the same way they’d killed Kissinger and the others? Or had the inventor been taken hostage, as well? If so, why? What could possibly be Orson’s connection to what he suspected was going on at the reservation? It made no sense.
Once the Russians had finished arguing, Cherkow turned to Colt.
“As long as you’re laying down, you might as well get some sleep. We have a little surprise in store for you when you wake up.”
Cherkow followed the other man out of the room. They left the door ajar, allowing Colt his first glimpse of what looked to be an adjacent living room. All he could see was a table, two chairs and a sun-faded, overstuffed sofa. Several cardboard boxes rested on the latter’s cushions. Standing beside the sofa was a short, thin man dressed in black. He had long red hair and a matching goatee. Colt had never seen him before.
Thinking back to his last conversation with Orson, Colt remembered the inventor mentioning that he would be leaving Taos for Albuquerque once he finished packing the things he planned to bring to the New Military Technologies Expo. Colt couldn’t be certain, but he felt there was a good chance he was looking the boxes that contained those items.
Lying on the cold floor, Colt tried to piece it together. What did it all mean? What had he gotten himself into?
Moments later, Colt heard the front door open. A cold draft swept its way toward him, carrying the pungent stench of javelinas. Franklin’s stomach clenched and he retched, bringing up little more than saliva mixed with more blood from his cracked lip. Out in the living room, the front door slammed shut and there was renewed arguing among his captors. Soon a fourth man strode into Colt’s view, wearing a knee-length black leather trench coat over his well-tailored suit. He was bald, thick-chested and carried himself with an air of authority.
If there had been any doubt that his abduction was linked to what was going on at the reservation, those doubts quickly vanished, for Colt found himself staring at the Roaming Bison Casino’s Director of Operations, Freddy McHale. When McHale glanced his way and the two men shared a look of mutual recognition, Colt realized as well that there was no way he would be allowed to live now that he knew who was behind his abduction.
CHAPTER NINE
The Roaming Bison Casino was not Frederik “the Butcher” Mikhaylov’s first foray into the wagering industry.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, gambling establishments had sprung up in nearly every major city throughout Russia, and, as was the case in many of America’s early casino ventures, organized crime had been quick to latch on to the phenomenon and turn it into one of its primary cash cows. Mikhaylov had been a thirty-year-old low-level goon for freelance mobsters in the suburb of Dolgoprudniy when the first casinos opened down the road in Moscow. His reputation as a brutal enforcer for loan sharks made him a natural choice when several small, competing mobs merged into the dreaded Dolgoprudnenskaya and muscled its way into the capital city’s more upscale gaming halls. Over the next dozen years, Mikhaylov specialized in “negotiating” the payment of gambling debts incurred by high rollers, and in those rare cases when physical assault and torture failed to produce desired results, the one-time slaughterhouse employee had no qualms about putting his butchering skills to good use, killing debtors in ways gruesome enough to earn press coverage that helped serve as a deterrent to anyone thinking they could welsh on monies owed the mob without dire consequence. By his own count, during his years as an enforcer, the Butcher settled over sixty million dollars’ worth of gambling debts and executed at least fifty individuals who were either unable or unwilling to honor their markers.
There came a point, however, at which Mikhaylov tired of what, for him, had become mere drudgery. He yearned for advancement within the ranks and a chance to set foot in the casinos for reasons other than targeting his next victim. He liked the idea of wearing a well-tailored suit and consorting with Moscow’s upper crust at the tables instead of in dark, back alleys, and in 2000 he carried out the vicious execution of a rival gang lord in exchange for an opportunity to become pit boss at Dolgoprudnenskaya’s crown jewel, the Regal Splendor Casino, located only a few blocks from the Kremlin. He flourished in the position, quickly becoming fluent in five languages and developing a personalized sense of savoir faire that combined a newfound cosmopolitan sensibility with the rakish charm that drew on his lower-middle-class upbringing. On the side, Mikhaylov ran a high-price escort service that allowed him to freely indulge in the sexual favors of some of Moscow’s most comely women. As his stature rose, the Russian forsook his modest apartment in Dolgoprudniy for a lavish penthouse suite at the Regal and began to dine regularly at the casino’s five-star restaurant, Nostrovia, where he would often use a private booth to entertain valued guests and conduct the sort of business negotiations that couldn’t be discussed out on the gambling floor. With a personal tailor at his disposal and no less than five customized luxury vehicles stored at a private garage adjacent to the casino, Mikhaylov, on the whole, had enjoyed an extravagant, privileged lifestyle that he couldn’t have even imagined in his youth.
Of course, part of Mikhaylov’s job at the tables required that he continue to deal with gamblers prone to wagering beyond their means, but the Russian had an uncanny knack for judging people and, unlike his predecessors, he routinely made a point not to extend credit in cases where he felt it would become necessary to execute the debtor and write off his or her debt. Yes, there had still been the frequent need for back alley “persuasion,” but Mikhaylov was now in a position to delegate the dirty work to others. He trained his own crew of goons, including Petenka Tramelik and Viktor Cherkow, and he trained them well. Over the next eight years, there were barely a dozen instances in which torture or blackmail failed and his men were forced to commit murder.
All seemed right with Mikhaylov’s world when, in 2008, the Russian president decried the proliferation of gambling in Russia and pushed through legislation banning casinos from urban centers throughout the country. Over the next two years, the Regal Splendor, as well as its illustrious counterparts in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities were closed down, leaving the Russian populace with the daunting proposition of traveling to Siberia or some other godforsaken hinterland to indulge in any form of wagering other than the national lottery. Some crime syndicates rolled with the punch and reluctantly set up shop in these remote wastelands, but Mikhaylov was among those who decided to leave Russia in pursuit of greener pastures. With Tramelik and Cherkow in tow, the Butcher pulled stakes and moved to Bolivia, where Dolgoprudnenskaya, through a shadow company, had poured nearly three hundred million dollars into the Andean Splendor, a gambling mecca modeled after the Moscow casino where Mikhaylov had reinvented himself. The resort was slow to catch on, however, and felt too much like a step down in the world to leave him satisfied. He continued to go through the motions as a duteous pit boss, but all the while kept his eye open for other, better opportunities.
He didn’t have long to wait.
Fourteen months into his Bolivian tenure, by which time he’d been promoted to Chief Officer of Gaming Operations, Mikhaylov was approached by seventy-year-old Evgenii Danilov, whose global renown as an eccentric billionaire was little more than a well-orchestrated front for his allegiance to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which in 1991 had replaced the notorious KGB. Danilov, with SVR’s blessing, had bought a stake in the Bolivian casino to help keep it afloat but he’d also chosen what he considered to be a more promising—and lucrative—gambling frontier to infiltrate: reservation casinos in the United States. Danilov’s various American enterprises were all affiliates of Global Holdings Corporation, which the elderly financier had painstakingly created as an Antwerp-based entity supposedly made up solely of investors from the European Union. GHC had recently won a bid to take over operations of the Roaming Bison as well as the nuclear waste facility located at Rosqui Pueblo. Mikhaylov was presented with an offer to come to America and help oversee the casino’s table action. It was, for Mikhaylov, the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. That offer was gilded even further when Danilov arranged for The Butcher, Tramelik and Cherkow to be sworn in as agents for SVR’s special operations force, Vympel.
Following several months of training and SVR debriefing at GHC’s Belgian headquarters, Mikhaylov and Tramelik were given forged identity papers along with extensively fabricated personal backstories and put on an international flight bound for the U.S., where, as Freddy McHale and Pete Trammell, both men spent the next two years slowly establishing themselves as an influential presence at both Roaming Bison and the nuclear waste facility. As much as the casino was a perennial moneymaker, for Danilov and SVR a stake in tribal gambling profits wasn’t an end in and of itself, but rather a means to help finance clandestine activity at the waste plant. The activity there served a long-standing agenda dating back more than fifty years to the height of the cold war, when Russia had squared off with the United States as the one country most capable of thwarting its aspirations for world domination. Part of that covert agenda was dependent upon securing access to a ready source of uranium beyond that contained in the nuclear fuel rods stored at the waste facility, hence Mikhaylov’s fervent lobbying with Taos Pueblo’s tribal leader Walter Upshaw and the decision to put Upshaw under increased surveillance when he balked at partnering with GHC. It was a bugged phone call carried out as part of that surveillance that had pinpointed Franklin Colt as the informant who’d aroused Upshaw’s suspicions about GHC’s ulterior motives for wanting to place the Taos reservation under its umbrella. Given what was at stake, the Butcher had made a point to be flown to Glorieta so that he could personally ensure that Colt would divulge the information he’d only alluded to in the cryptic phone message he’d left with Upshaw earlier in the day.
There was a second reason for Mikhaylov venturing this far from his duties at the casino, and it was the other matter the Russian chose to first deal with once he’d entered the modest five-room farmhouse that served as a base of operations for more than two dozen lower-tier SVR agents charged with dealings that fell beyond the scope of debt-collecting at the casino.
After confirming that Colt was still alive, Mikhaylov briefly chastised Viktor Cherkow and the other three SVR agents for having caused so much disruption in the course of abducting the security officer. Afterward he sent them to prepare for their next assignment, raiding Colt’s house to look for the evidence he’d collected against GHC. Once he and Tramelik were alone Mikhaylov told his red-haired colleague, “I hope you managed things a little better on your end.”
“Everything went smoothly,” Tramelik replied. “Upshaw and Orson are both dead, and it’ll be pinned on Upshaw’s kid. We took care of him, too. Vladik stayed behind to monitor things and keep an eye on the safe house.”
“What about Upshaw’s cell phone?”
“I got that, too,” Tramelik reported, “but there’s only one call between him and Colt and that was two weeks ago, before we visited him.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mikhaylov said. “You said Colt called him while he was in his car just this morning.”
“I know,” Tremalik said. “He must have deleted the call afterward.”
“I’m not so sure,” the other Russian said. “Ilyin took Colt’s cell phone right after they grabbed him at the airport, and the only call to Upshaw was the same one from two weeks ago.”
Tramelik frowned. There seemed only one likely explanation. “They must’ve each gotten separate phones for when they called each other.”
“Smart move if that’s what they did,” Mikhaylov said. “Upshaw didn’t have a second phone on him?”
Tramelik shook his head. “It’s not like I had time to search through the whole car,” he said. “Besides, when I found the one phone I figured it was the one we were looking for.”
“You’ll need to get back to Barad and have him sniff around a little more,” Mikhaylov said. “If Colt and Upshaw were exchanging text messages or attachments, that other phone might have the proof we’re looking for.”
“The car will end up at the police impound yard,” Tramelik said. “If they haven’t gone through it, maybe Barad can beat them to it.”
“It’s worth a try,” Mikhaylov said. “And when Cherkow gets to Colt’s place he’ll need to look for his other phone, too.”
“What if Colt kept it in his car?” Tramelik suggested. “We should probably try to get to the impound yard in Albuquerque, too.”
“Let’s wait and see what Cherkow can come up with,” Mikhaylov said. “Now back to Orson. Did you get hold of his inventions?”
Tramelik gestured at the cardboard boxes on the nearby sofa. “We obviously couldn’t get to his helicopter, but we took everything from his workshop except his computer.”
“Why not the computer?” Mikhaylov asked. “There had to be something we could use on it.”
“I got all that.” Tramelik fished through his pocket and withdrew a key chain loaded with pinky-size flash drives. “I copied everything off the hard drive. I left the computer because I used it to make sure the kid gets blamed.”
Mikhaylov’s radar went up immediately. “You didn’t plant the heroin?”
“Yes, along with the kit and syringe, but—”
“The plan was to make it look like he stole the inventions to buy smack,” Mikhaylov reminded the other man. “You were supposed to shoot him up so everyone would think he went off on a rampage.”
“That’s still the way it’ll look,” Tramelik insisted. “I just figured it’d be better to underline everything in case the police there are idiots.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“Let’s go to the barn,” Tramelik said. “I’ll show you on the computer there.”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL him about the map?” Ivan Nesterov asked Viktar Cherkow as the two men headed past a large, walk-in freezer resting next to the barn and made their way to a small outbuilding twenty yards past the farmhouse. The building had once seen use as a milk shed but the SVR operatives had turned most of the structure into a makeshift weapons depot.
“Tell him it got left behind in the truck?” Cherkow snapped at the wheelman who’d driven the stolen vehicle they’d used to abduct Franklin Colt. “After the way he chewed us out? Are you crazy? He’d probably shoot us!”
“Good point,” Nesterov conceded, unlocking the door to the shed.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Cherkow said. “Besides, we already know where we’re going. We don’t need a map!”
The men entered the shed, where a shelving unit lined the far wall, stocked top to bottom with an assortment of weapons and ammunition.
“I’m just concerned the police might find it and figure out what we’re up to,” Nesterov said.
“They don’t have jurisdiction on the reservation,” Cherkow reminded his colleague. “By the time they go through all the red tape to get the tribal police involved, we’ll have been there and left already.”
“I hope you’re right,” Nesterov said.
Cherkow detected the other man’s skepticism and gestured at the weapons cache. “Look, if you’re worried we can just load up more firepower and bring along a few more men.”
“I think that’d be a good idea.”
“Let’s do it, then,” Cherkow said. He grabbed a wheelbarrow next to the shelving unit and began to fill it with firearms and grenades. “I’ll take care of this. Go round up some more men and get the chopper started. If anybody gets in our way at Colt’s place, they won’t know what hit them.”
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
“BARBARA,” AARON “THE BEAR” Kurtzman said as Barbara Price strode into the Computer Room, “what’s Striker’s status?”
Striker was Mack Bolan’s in-house handle.
“He’s on his way to check on this Franklin Colt’s wife,” she replied.
“Sounds like he and the boys had a close call in that flood channel.”
Price nodded. “It could have been a lot worse.”
“I hear you.” Kurtzman shook his head wearily. “Two cops dead along with a civilian. And we still don’t know about Colt. Or this Orson guy, for that matter.”
“Let’s hope the crews come up with something,” Price said.
Inside the large dimly lit chamber, Kurtzman’s three associates were seated at their respective workstations, eyes fixed on their computer screens as they diligently combed through cyberspace for data that would allow them to lend support to Stony Man field teams. The older two—former FBI agent Carmen Delahunt and one-time Berkeley cybernetics professor Huntington Wethers—were so engrossed in their tasks they didn’t realize Price had entered the room. Akira Tokaido, a young computer hacker extraordinaire, glanced up from his keyboard, however, and nodded a greeting as he dislodged the earbud trailing down to his ever-running MP3 player.
“Orson’s still MIA,” he reported, “but I cobbled together a little more background on him so we can at least have a better idea who we’re dealing with.”
“Fire away.” Kurtzman eased into his workstation and set down his mug. There were other seats available throughout the large room but Price remained standing, preferring to pace off some of her nervous energy.
“Orson came out of Stanford with a Ph.D. in geophysics and tried his hand at think tanks for a few years,” Tokaido reported, glancing at the work file he’d cobbled together on his computer screen. “He tinkered with inventions on the side and registered a handful of minor patents, but nothing caught on. About four years ago he switched gears and signed on with an R & D outfit based out of Chicago. Must’ve been the jump start he needed because after a couple years he went freelance and wound up getting the Defense Department to cough up big-time for a couple of his inventions involving depleted uranium.”
“Like the tank armor,” Price interjected.
“That was the biggie all right,” Tokaido said, “but there were a couple others, and he’s got a booth at that expo in Albuquerque and is supposed to be showing off a new batch of gizmos.”
“Provided he shows up,” Kurtzman said. “What’s he been working on?”
Tokaido scrolled down his screen. “I don’t have a lot of details, but among other things he’s taken the armor thing a little further and adapted it for battle gear.”
“Some new generation flak jacket?” Kurtzman asked.
“That’d be my guess,” Tokaido said. “If it takes after the tank armor, we’re talking something lighter but stronger with some kind of embedded solar capacity.”
“Sounds like something out of one of those superhero movies,” Price commented.
“Sure does,” Tokaido said. “Anyway, along with that he’s built a prototype high-speed armored helicopter and is doing some kind of work with redox batteries.”
“Redox?”
Tokaido nodded. “I think it’s another uranium application. Something about a backup power source.”
Kurtzman mulled over the information as he took another sip of his coffee. “Cowboy’s right. That flak jacket sounds like something we could make use of. Maybe the chopper and battery, too.”
“Hold the fort, gang,” Carmen Delahunt suddenly called out.
“You got something?” Kurtzman said.
Delahunt ran a hand through her red hair as she glanced up from her computer screen.
“I’ve been running Orson’s name through the search engines and came across his blog,” she told the others. “Check out his last entry. Monitor three.”
Delahunt moved her cursor and moments later her computer-screen image was duplicated on one of the large flat-screen monitors mounted to the east wall. Kurtzman and the others turned their attention to the display and Price wandered toward the wall for a closer look.
Orson’s blog page featured his photograph along with a series of entries logged over the past week. Delahunt had highlighted one entered a few hours earlier.
I’ve been betrayed! the post read. I just came back from running errands and my workshop’s been cleaned out. Everything! My life’s work! Gone! It could only be one person. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and a chance at a new life, and this is how he repays me? By playing me for a fool? A word to the wise out there: never trust a drug addict, no matter how clean they claim to be.
“Whoa,” Tokaido muttered once he’d read the dispatch.
“This would certainly explain why he didn’t show up at the airport,” Huntington Wethers said.
“Maybe,” Kurtzman replied, his brow furrowed. “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Kurtzman said. “Something about it doesn’t smell right.”
“I skimmed a few of the earlier blogs,” Delahunt said. “If it’s the ranting that throws you, he’s gone off a few other times about other things.”
Kurtzman shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s that. It all just seems a little too pat. And I’m not just talking about why the guy felt he had to go blabbing to the world about this. Me? Something like that happens, I’d skip the ‘press conference’ and just take care of business.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Price said. She turned to Delahunt and Tokaido. “Is there anything in either the blogs or background check that could give us an idea who this drug addict might be?”
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