A tall figure appeared and was joined almost immediately by two more men. While Bolan and his companion pressed themselves into the earth, the three men leaned over the edge of the pit and relieved themselves. The warrior put the glasses on them, and he could see they were joking and laughing, but the bulldozer's engine drowned out any trace of the sound.
When he had finished, the tall man zipped himself up and backed away from the pit to slouch against the side of the van. He and his companions wore similar clothing, a dark blue-green, like some sort of military uniform, although it belonged to no armed force Bolan was familiar with.
"Looks like some sort of private army," he whispered.
"I wonder how many of them there are?"
As if to satisfy his curiosity, three more men appeared around the van's open door. They joined their companions and sat heavily on the ground. One man jerked cans from a plastic web and tossed them to others.
"Six, plus one on the dozer, makes at least seven," Bolan said. He swung the glasses toward the tractor, but it was parked at an angle, and he could see virtually nothing of the cab. He scrambled to his knees and reached down to help the younger man to his feet. As he started forward, the bulldozer suddenly went silent.
"You want to take them head on, or try to take out a few of them from here?" Carlton asked.
"We don't even know who they are," Bolan reminded him.
"You're right. They could just be a bunch of guys who like to bury fires in the desert."
Bolan stood up and swung the Skorpion around where he could reach it easily. "Cover me, but don't show yourself unless you have to."
Carlton stayed flat on the sand. He worked the lever on his Winchester, chambered a round and sighted in on the tall, storklike man still standing at the rear of the van.
Bolan got to within thirty yards before they even noticed him, and he was close enough to see over the lip of the pit. The ruined bus lay at the bottom, partly covered with soil. It was split open like a filleted fish, its wreckage stained black with smoke and charred by the roaring holocaust that had consumed it.
These guys were anything but innocent. Bolan had seen enough to know that. He slowed his pace as he glanced at the wreckage, and the tall man finally noticed him.
The stork shouted at Bolan, his words slurred. "Hey, gringo, you lost? You a long way from home…" As he spoke, he moved slightly, just enough for an Uzi on a leather strap over his left shoulder to swing clear of his rib cage. He grabbed the submachine gun with his right hand and let the strap slip from his shoulder.
Bolan stood his ground, and the other Mexicans got to their feet. The Executioner shifted to the left a bit, to make sure Carlton had a clear shot. In a quick inventory he realized that at least three of the other men were also armed with automatic weapons.
"I asked you a question, man," the stork said, taking several steps forward. "You lost, or what?" There was no mistaking the drunken slur. When it came to reflexes, Bolan had an edge.
The Uzi shifted in the guy's hand, and he came to an unsteady halt. Bolan started to back away when the Uzi jumped and the first burst of fire clawed at the sand to his left. He dived to the ground, his arms extended over his head, and rolled over several times before he was up and tracking with the Skorpion. Suddenly the stork's head snapped back sharply. For a moment Bolan wondered what had happened, until the unmistakable bark of Carlton's carbine rolled past. The remaining five seemed stunned for a moment, then scattered, tossing a porous 9 mm wall in his direction.
Bolan cut loose with the Skorpion, aiming waist-high to catch them as they dropped into a crouch. Two men crumpled to the ground immediately, and Carlton nailed another, splattering gore all over the gleaming black side of the van.
Bolan charged forward, zigzagging to throw the drunken gunmen off stride. He could see the shins of one man behind the open rear door of the van. The other was out of sight. The warrior sprinted straight toward the van, launching himself in a low arc as he neared its front. He landed on the roof and dug the toes of his boots in. They caught on the nearly vertical strip above the windshield and stopped him from sliding off the back end.
He clambered to his feet, and a burst of autofire ripped through the roof of the van from inside. The spot where he had lain just a moment before now looked like a ragged sieve. Bolan didn't want to move, in case he revealed his position, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the man inside sprayed another burst up through the roof.
He took the field glasses from around his neck and threw them at the rear edge of the van. Almost immediately, the roof exploded, blasting the binoculars into twisted junk. Gauging the angle, Bolan ripped a burst through from above, then leaped down. He hit the ground running and shoulder-rolled past the back end of the van. Swinging the Skorpion in one hand, he laid down a barrage of fire until the magazine was empty.
Bolan tossed the Skorpion aside and leveled his Desert Eagle as he climbed to his feet. There was no need. The man behind the van lay on his back, one arm severed just below the elbow and his lower rib cage smashed by the 7.65 mm slugs. He'd been hit from behind, and raw bone — the broken ends of several ribs — jutted through his uniform shirt.
The man inside the van was also dead. He lay on his back, his head lolling back over the rear bumper. The dead man's Uzi lay in the sand, the pistol grip stained red by a thin cascade of blood running down over the bumper and dripping onto the ground.
Another shot from the carbine spun Bolan around, and he dashed past the van in time to see Carlton sprinting toward the base of the pyramid. Bolan ran toward the figure squirming in the dust. The driver of the bulldozer lay on his back, hugging his knees to his chest. Blood from a shattered shin seeped through his fingers.
Carlton joined them a few moments later. He was breathing heavily and holding his shoulder. "I figured we might need a little information, so I didn't want to waste him."
Before Bolan could answer, he heard a whining engine and turned to see a cloud of dust spiraling up behind a Jeep racing toward them.
"We've got company."
29
Calderone sat in a high-backed chair, supporting his chin with one arm. Alfredo paced back and forth in front of his employer. The young man was nervous, but also proud of his achievement. Don Carlos tapped the tips of his fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair.
Ramón stood in the doorway, watching through hooded eyes. He didn't understand Alfredo's work, and he couldn't understand Calderone's fascination with it. With two dozen Alfredos working for him, Don Carlos would still be hustling chickens in a ten-year-old car. He should understand that computers were nice playthings, but the real work was done with a strong back and a loaded gun. Ramón understood that. Why didn't Don Carlos?
While Alfredo ran through his checklist one last time, adjusting switches and reseating patch cords, changing settings and flipping toggles, Calderone remained almost comatose. Only the quietly tapping fingers gave evidence that he was awake. Ramón shifted anxiously from one foot to the other. This kind of garbage bored him. He thought of asking Alfredo whether his toys could have taken care of Tomás Sanchez as easily as the pistol in his pocket.
But Calderone was too touchy these days. He seemed to resent any criticism of the electronic wilderness Alfredo was so busy putting together. But Ramón was no fool. He understood that as long as you worked for someone else, being indispensable was the key to success, or at least to keeping your job. And he suspected Alfredo understood it, too. If no one else could work with the computers and the satellite communications, Alfredo was guaranteed a job. It also meant he would stay alive.
Ramón kept seeing the look on Sanchez's face that morning as he realized what was about to happen. He was troubled by it, but not because of what he had done. What troubled him was the way, as he tried to focus on Sanchez's expression, the fat man's features shimmered, blurred and refocused, only now as it reappeared, the face was Ramón's own.
Ramón had come back all full of him
self, as happy as a kid with a good report card, and his boss hadn't even asked how it had gone. He wanted to raise it himself, but that would just be an admission that he valued Calderone's approval. If he wanted to be as indispensable as Alfredo, he had to control himself.
He kept reminding himself that as long as Don Carlos didn't own him, he was a free man. And in the world they lived in, nothing was more indispensable than a free man, a man who could thumb his nose and walk away without looking over his shoulder, a man who could tell you to kiss his ass, and mean it. That's the kind of man Ramón Santana wanted to be.
But at the moment it would be a mistake to attack Alfredo, and he knew it.
Calderone suddenly sat upright and clapped his hands impatiently. "Alfredo, huh? Let's get on with it. I'm tired."
"Yes, Don Carlos. One minute, and I'll be ready."
"Now, Alfredo, now!"
Ramón stepped through the doorway and leaned against the wall. In the dim light his smile was almost lost. He just might not have to wait as long as he thought.
Alfredo dimmed the lights even more, then sat on a low chair in front of a control console. He clicked a switch, and the wall above him glowed softly. Pressing a button, he raised the phosphor level, increasing the diffuse glow. "First," he said, "the railroad system. What would you like to see?"
"Texas, show me Texas," Calderone demanded.
Alfredo pulled a keyboard toward him and punched in a set of numbers, which caused the screen to burst into a fiery lace. "There. Every main railroad line in Texas, and every spur, too, if I move in closer."
"Do it!"
He punched in a new set of numbers, and Galveston swam center screen. The spidery filaments looked almost like actual flames flickering on the giant screen.
"Now," Alfredo continued, "let me show you something special." His voice quavered, like a kid demonstrating his entry in a science fair. His fingers tapped at the keyboard again, and the map shrank and shifted to the left. The right of the screen was suddenly alive with crawling ants. On closer scrutiny it could be seen as a digit sequence. "Those numbers identify every single railroad car in the Galveston area shown on the map."
He clicked a toggle, and the numbers froze. Reaching for a bright red ball set in the console, he pressed it once and a bright red arrowhead appeared on the screen. Rolling the ball with his fingertips, he moved the arrowhead, selected a number at random and pressed the ball again. The columns vanished and were replaced by a single entry. "There," Alfredo said proudly, "is everything you could possibly want to know about that particular car. Who owns it, what it's carrying, departure and destination points, contents. Anything at all."
What's the big deal?" Ramón demanded.
"Shut up!" Calderone snapped. "Let him continue."
"You want to send some chickens from Chihuahua to Phoenix, you find the nearest empty railroad car. I change its orders by tying into the computer lines. It sits on a spur. You move the cargo in, load it up and I change the entry again. Nobody knows but us. Beautiful."
Alfredo demonstrated that technique, then called up a different map. "This is a section of the border area in southeastern Arizona. The little green lights are the motion detectors. The red lights are Border Patrol vehicles."
"Bet you can't move them around," Ramón challenged.
"As long as we know where they are, we don't have to," Alfredo snapped. "Now I want to show you something else." Working quickly at the keyboard, he called up yet another map.
"That looks familiar," Calderone said. "What is it?"
"You're sitting in it." Alfredo laughed. "It's the compound. And…" He stopped suddenly. "What the…?"
"What's wrong? Your little toy doesn't work? Maybe it needs batteries," Ramón taunted.
"See that blinking light?"
"What is it?" Calderone demanded. "What's wrong?"
"Someone is approaching in a large vehicle. About ten miles away."
"Probably just Miranda with the truck," Ramón suggested. "No big deal."
"No," Calderone said, getting to his feet. "Miranda was taking the truck back to Arizona. Alfredo, can you get a picture for me?"
"As a matter of fact…"
* * *
Bolan sat behind the wheel of the Mack tractor trailer, Carlton beside him, loading the weapons. Ray and Milt Conlan rode in the black van ahead of them. Calderone's estate was fifteen minutes way.
The sun was already high in the sky, and it glinted unmercifully from the elaborate chrome trim on the tractor's hood. Bolan and Carlton both wore mirrored sunglasses and looked like a parody of good ol' boys highballing through a country-western song, with Dave Dudley on their tail.
They could try to bluff their way through Calderone's defenses, but Bolan wasn't convinced it would work. The fallback was something all too common — brute force. According to the wounded driver of the bulldozer, the gate through the wall was the worst place to attack. The tempered steel gates were anchored in steel-reinforced concrete pillars and could withstand high impact, even that of a tank. If they were going to go through the wall, they had better be prepared to make their own gate.
They were.
Bolan hadn't come this far to let something like a wall hold him back. He ran several contingency scenarios through his head as he drove, discarding one after the other. They would be facing approximately forty men, and the odds were about as high as they could get. Randy Carlton was a gamer, but he was still recovering from his wounds. Conlan was a gutsy old man, but it took more than guts. Milt Conlan was completely untested, an unknown quantity, and in the mathematical computations of the Executioner, all unknowns were equal to zero. It was no indictment of the young man, just one of the harsh realities Bolan had learned to live with.
The van threw up a constant trail of brown dust, and the warrior had to spritz the windshield periodically. He glanced at Carlton a couple of times, but the kid was keeping his own council. Bolan knew what was running through his mind, and respected the need for quiet. He'd lost more than one partner in his own life, and you had to slog your way through the desire for blind vengeance. There was no room for passion when a man was in combat mode.
Not if he wanted to walk away alive.
The desert rolled in soft hills, and the trucks slipped back and forth, sliding between the higher elevations. Bolan kept waiting for the first glimpse of Calderone's fortress, and when it came, he was impressed. High on a steep hill, it towered over the surrounding desert. The mountains in the distance were little more than smears of purple, like the rough brush strokes of a primitive landscape artist, suggestions more than details.
Bolan whistled softly. The walls around the compound looked like slabs of stone. Even at this range, he knew they were in for trouble.
At the very center, glittering in the bright sun, the steel gates looked like a sarcastic smile in an inscrutable face. Bolan rapped the horn, and Ray Conlan hit his brakes. The Executioner swung up alongside the van and hit his own pedal, the air brakes snorting, hissing.
Bolan jumped down from the high running board of the cab. The old sheriff opened the window, and the warrior leaned into a draft of conditioned air. "What do you think, Sheriff?"
"Looks like we got ourselves more than we bargained for, Mr. Belasko."
"You inclined to wait for backup?"
Conlan snorted. "Hell, man, why wait for something we know we ain't gonna git? You and I both know we got no jurisdiction here. But some things are more important than a few lines on a piece of paper."
"I take it that means you don't want to wait?"
"Hellfire, son, I didn't get to be this old by sittin' on my duff. You step on a rattler, you better move fast. The way I figure it, we already done the steppin', and I reckon it's time to move."
Bolan nodded. "I think we better forget about the gate."
"Me, too. How many of them RPGs we got?"
"Six."
"Reckon that's enough?"
"It'll have to be."
"Son, I like you. Ain't too often I can say that about a federal cop. Most of you guys are three-piece suiters, ought to be sittin' at a desk somewheres, one of them little bitty calculators in your hands. You're different. We come out of this okay, you want a job?"
Bolan laid a hand on the old man's shoulder. "Thanks, Sheriff, but I don't think so."
"Figures. Can't blame a feller for tryin', though, can you?"
"No, you can't. I think you and Milt should ride with us now. If they spot us, and they probably will, it's going to get a lot hotter than it already is."
Conlan nodded. "Lead the way, son."
Bolan climbed up to the driver's door and stuck his head into the cab. "You feel well enough to drive this rig. Randy?"
Carlton shrugged. "Sure, what the hell, why not? What you got in mind?"
"You'll see. Lower the ramp."
30
While Carlton fumbled with the hydraulic controls, Bolan sprinted back to the van. "Sheriff, you and Milt get all the weapons out of the van."
"You got it, son." Conlan hopped out of the driver's seat with more vitality than Bolan would have expected. Dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, the old man looked about twenty years younger than his age. He and his nephew opened the van's rear door and started to haul the weapons from it, carrying them a few at a time to the rear of the trailer.
"Make sure you get the RPGs," Bolan called out, then he scrambled up the ramp to the bulldozer and bent down to unlock the rear chain. The heavy steel sagged with a sharp clank as he pulled the steel retainer bar free. The dozer shifted slightly as the pressure of the chain was released.
"You ever drive one of these babies?" Ray Conlan asked as he joined Bolan.
"No, I haven't."
Border Sweep Page 19