He knew that he had to face the possibilities squarely. Regardless of who was calling the shots, those “troops” down there could be U.S. Army soldiers. This could be a “friendly” force, subverted by those above them into the counter-war against Mack Bolan.
And, yes, it was a chilling thought.
Bolan had always made it a point to confine his war to the proper enemy. He had never shot it out with cops or other officials; he simply evaded them, the best way he could.
But, now …
Yes, it was a cold withdrawal for the Executioner. Already he had engaged this present “enemy” and left many dead upon the field of combat. And there was no way Bolan could rationalize an “error” of that magnitude.
No way.
If he was getting that sloppy—if his combat instincts had gone that sour—then it was time for the war to end.
How could he ever again trust himself with the death decision? An executioner’s “error” was noncorrectable.
Dammit—he had to know!
The troubled warrior cautiously circled to the access road and invested another ten quiet minutes in a study of the gate area. The all-terrain vehicle had not budged from its earlier position. The gate guard, two “soldiers” in white MP helmets, maintained their lonely vigil from inside the vehicle. Automatic weapons stood at the ready.
Bolan settled into the wait, patiently determined to find the truth about this place. The ten minutes seemed like hours, and he was ready for the “MP” who finally stepped down from the guard vehicle. The guy left his weapon on the seat, did a couple of quick deep knee bends, muttered something to his companion and lit a cigarette, then ambled into the sagebrush at the edge of the road.
It was the moment Bolan had been waiting for.
He moved swiftly then, along the blind side of the vehicle until he was about ten paces out, where he raised the air pistol and sent a stundart to the guy in the vehicle. The guy raised a hand to the back of his neck and quietly collapsed. That dart would very quickly dissolve. Within thirty minutes to an hour, depending on the guy, the drug itself would vanish entirely from the bloodstream. The guy would awaken as though from a normal nap and all the tests known to medical science would fail to reveal the cause of it all.
Bolan waited for the second man to return from his “head call”—then he soft-touched him, also, dropping the guy in mid-stride. He carried him to the vehicle and placed him on the seat beside the other one, then began the quick shakedown.
Both wore dog tags—official army ID tags. Bolan took impressions of each, using the pencil-and-paper technique for blocking-in the raised lettering. He found other useful information in pockets and wallets, making notes of these items. Finally he copied the serial numbers from the automatic weapons and from the vehicle itself.
When he returned to the warwagon a few minutes later, there was nothing left behind to suggest his visit. Those guys would awaken feeling just a bit groggy, perhaps a bit disoriented for a couple of minutes—and probably neither would admit to the other that he’d actually been asleep.
But as the warwagon quietly powered away from that cold zone, Bolan was now almost dead certain that he had made a horrendous error in judgment.
And the coldness went with him, seeping into his chest and burying itself there. They’d finally done it to him. They’d sucked him, set him up—and now, maybe, he was no different than they.
That was cold, yeah—bitter cold.
4: CRACKER
Harold Brognola occupied the most sensitive chair in Washington. He was unofficially referred to as “the nation’s No. 2 cop”—denoting his position in the U.S. Department of Justice. With all the recent hysteria surrounding that city, he’d also found himself plugged into the hotseat as “special advisor” on the National Security Council. As if that were not enough, he was also the man with the federal charter to stop the illegal crusade of one Mack Bolan.
In his essentials, Brognola was actually an organized crime specialist. He had been far down in the ranks, as leader of a federal organized crime task force, when Sgt. Bolan returned from Vietnam and began slugging it out with the enemy on the home turf. Being an absolute realist, the federal cop had immediately recognized the effectiveness of Bolan’s illegal war and he’d moved quickly to secretly align himself—and thus his government—with that effort. Bolan himself had never been too happy nor even comfortable with any such arrangement, even though, early during the wars, Brognola had managed to arm-twist official secret sympathy for the guy in Washington. It was during the fourth major campaign that Brognola carried to the warrior a full package “deal”—including general amnesty and a pledge of quiet government support of the war. All they’d wanted in return was a bit of control over the guy. But Bolan had turned it down flat.
The guy’s guns were not for hire.
“Thanks,” he’d quietly told Brognola, “but I don’t want a license.”
Brognola understood. And it deepened the admiration he held for the big cool guy. But it sure made Brognola’s job tougher. With that refusal to join forces came the end of the brief romance from Washington. The reaction was swift and imperative. Stop the guy. And, of course, Brognola was given the grim assignment.
He’d been walking a tightwire ever since.
Mack Bolan was like a magic hen who lays golden eggs. All you had to do was follow the guy around and pick up the pieces in his wake. Brognola had been doing just that, and the official war on organized crime was benefitting in every way. Brognola himself had fallen heir to considerable personal benefits. What the hell—he’d gone clear to the No. 2 spot, thanks in large part to the one and only Mack Bolan.
And the big brass wanted that hen dead?
Harold Brognola was a cop, sure, a good cop, but he was also a human being. He did not want Mack Bolan dead—nor even removed from circulation. It was a tightwire act, but Hal Brognola remained committed to a friendship and to a human relationship that transcended professional ethics. He remained committed to Mack Bolan.
And so did another. Leo Turrin would stand up to God himself, on Bolan’s behalf. Leo was a No. 2 man, also—on the other side. Underboss in the mob’s Pittsfield arm, he was the highest ranked mafioso ever to carry a secret federal badge. The undercover cop from Pittsfield had been an obscure underling in the syndicate when Bolan started ripping them up. He would have ripped Leo, as well—and came uncomfortably close to doing just that before the little guy revealed his true role to Bolan. Leo Turrin had since led a triple life—federal agent, mafia boss, Bolan ally. The two fed each other, and the interchange had been as profitable for one as for the other. Turrin’s rise in mob circles were meteoric. His federal stock had reaped huge dividends, as well. The value of the spin-off there was incalculable—and none was more aware of this than Hal Brognola. Very soon, it was felt, Turrin would be joining the elite circle of syndicate power known as La Commissione—the official ruling body of the organized underworld. No price could be too high for an undercover seat in that circle.
And, no, Brognola did not want Mack Bolan dead or even disabled.
Nor did Leo Turrin.
The call came in the grayness of a Washington dawn.
“This is Sticker,” announced the familiarly disguised voice from Pittsfield.
“Just a minute,” Brognola growled, and switched to the hold line. “Business,” he mumbled to the sleepy inquiry in his wife’s eyes as he left the bed. He lit a cigar and pulled on a robe, in that order, then went directly to the study where he diverted the call into a security hookup.
“Okay, Sticker. Who dies at dawn?”
“Depends,” was the quiet reply. “What’s going in Colorado?”
Brognola sighed. “Many things. The Broncos are looking good this year. Could even make it to the play-offs. I hear also happy reports from Aspen—should be a good year for skiing. Other than that, who knows about Colorado?”
“You should,” Turrin told him. “They’re calling Denver the left bank of Wash
ington. Just because we have an athlete in the White House these days is no reason to downgrade all the rest.”
“Okay, sure. Colorado is Government West. So what? For a conversation at dawn, tell me—so the hell what?”
“So Striker’s out there, that’s what. Only this time he appears to be the struckee. The guy’s in a hell of a sweat, Hal. Wants to know if there’s a federal game plan running there. Says he’s encountered a quote military killer force unquote. He inflicted heavy casualties in the breakaway. Thought they were quote enemy forces unquote. But now he’s sweating the sweats of the damned. Frankly, so am I. I’m the one put him onto the area.”
“You had movements?”
“Well … sort of. Odors more than movements. Striker smells a setup. He has positive make on one faction. They are mine, and that’s a positive. The others, he has reasons to believe, are yours. A combination, Hal. Are you running one?”
“No.”
“That didn’t sound like a hundred percent no. Are you on top of the question?”
“I guess not. To my knowledge, it’s a no. I’ll have to look around. Did you say heavy casualties?”
Turrin sighed sibilantly into the connection. “Yeah.”
“Dammit.”
“Well … I guess it had to happen. It’s hard to call the players without a program, Hal. I don’t know how the guy has managed to do it, all this time. The point is—you know what a conscientious whitehat the guy is—the point is this: the guy has been on the edge for a long time. He’s not a psychopath, you know, and—”
Brognola snorted into that line of reasoning. “Of course he’s not. He’s the sanest man I ever—”
“Okay, that’s just the point. If it turns out that he’s slaughtered a bunch of his ‘soldiers of the same side,’ then you know what that’s liable to do to the guy. As I say, he’s been on the edge. An ordinary man would have cracked long ago. This could be his cracker, Hal. Frankly, I’m worried to death.”
Brognola chewed that for a moment before replying, “So am I, Sticker. Listen, I want to talk to him. Tell him to contact me.”
“You know he won’t do that,” Turrin said. “He is, though, sending you a package. Contains names and army serial numbers, also identification numbers off of some weapons and a military vehicle, some fingerprints, photographs, various items of intelligence. Wants you to put it together. I’ll be calling you again in exactly four hours. And I hope to God, Hal, that you’ll have some comforting words I can pass on to the guy.”
“Where do I get the package?”
“Meet TWA Flight 250, arriving Dulles at eight o’clock, registered parcel. It’s addressed to Harold Brown.”
“Okay,” Brognola replied, sighing. “I’ll get it. Meanwhile, you contact our shining knight and tell him to cool it until he hears from me in the matter. He’s to go to ground and lay there. Make sure he understands that.”
“He says he’s in the web,” Turrin gloomily reported. “Says another quote death decision unquote could confront him at any moment. But he’s tied his own hands, Hal. And that’s what worries me. You get me happy words, damn quick, so I can untie the guy.”
“Goddammit, Goddammit,” Brognola muttered as he hung up.
He returned to the bedroom and a fully awakened wife.
She told him, softly, “You look as though you’d just confronted your own id.”
“Go back to sleep, Helen,” he said, sighing, and began getting into his clothes.
“You’re going out? This early? Without breakfast?”
“I’ll pick up something on the way.”
“On the way to where?” she wanted to know. Washington wives had become terribly edgy, of late. Helen Brognola was no exception. “What’s going on?”
He pulled on his pants and made a face at his “bride” of twelve years. “Business,” he replied quietly.
“Monkey business, I’ll bet,” she said, trying to mask her uneasiness with banter.
There was a “thing” between Hal Brognola and his bride—a sort of spooky, ESP-ish thing. She always knew.
He gave it to her in a single word. “Bolan.”
“Oh,” she said, eyes wide and fixed on his. “Is it bad?”
Helen had never met Mack Bolan, never set eyes on him. But she knew him. She knew him well, via that “thing” with her husband.
“It’s bad,” he told her.
“Give him our love,” she whispered, as she kissed her husband goodbye.
Hal Brognola knew that Mack Bolan would need much more than that.
What the guy needed was a band of angels.
And not even the No. 2 cop of the nation could provide him with that.
5: THICKENINGS
At the time of gray dawn in Washington it remained a star-filled night over Colorado. It had been a busy night for Mack Bolan. Withdrawing from that secret base, he had carefully plotted the track and precisely fixed the geographic location in the general area of Mt. Audubon—just south of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Shadow Mountain Recreation Area, though well removed from any center of human activity. It was a very wild area of few roads and virtually no human habitation. The nearest town appeared to be a small mountain village called Peaceful Valley, and it was here that Bolan found himself at just past midnight. He found a campsite a few miles farther south, where he parked the warwagon and immediately began programming the intelligence gathered by her surveillance systems during that long stakeout in the shadow of Mt. Audubon.
Though there was a wealth of information stored in the surveillance banks, very little of it seemed to be of a useful nature—at the present stage of things, anyway. The infra-red photography seemed to hold the richest store but even that was no more than an assortment of anonymous faces and equipment.
The final reading from the program scans was no more than a subjective judgment verifying the misgivings gained first hand. The operation bore all the earmarks of U.S. Military, and there was simply nothing in the evidence to refute it. Bolan would not have engaged that force had it not been for the clear Mafia presence in their midst—and, of course, there was the klinker. The only true comfort to be found there, for Bolan, was the death’s-edge testimony of Jingo Morelli, the hood from Cleveland. And even that small comfort was watered a bit by the possibility that Jingo himself could have been misled with regard to the true setup. Jingo was a nobody, a small timer without distinction in the enemy ranks. He would not necessarily know exactly what was happening in Colorado.
One thing did stand out clearly in the electronic intelligence data. The movement against Bolan had been well planned and carefully coordinated. Their only error was the one that beat them: a miscalculation of Bolan’s firepower. The rocketry had come as a surprise. They had not been prepared for anything like that.
Next time, they would be.
Bolan’s problem was to determine if there was to be a next time. He needed identification of that opposing force. Beyond that, he had no clear task in mind at the moment—there was simply the knowledge that he was in a hell of a cold situation regardless of which way that identity turned. He was in their web and he knew it. A certain amount of localized movement would be possible, but any attempt to break completely clear of the kill zone was almost certain to result in confrontation and engagement. It was not the sort of game Bolan preferred to play—not even when the sides were clearly identified and the tasks more or less defined. He did not know the precise perimeter of the kill zone. He did not know the full dimensions of the killer force. The Shadow Mountain base did not have to be the only one; there could be others. If that was really U.S. Army out there …?
Yeah, it was a cold situation. Colder than anything he could imagine. It was equivalent to being in deep penetration of VC territory with the entire countryside aroused to your presence there and with the uncomforting suspicion that your own forces had been ordered to shoot you on sight.
This whole lousy war had been conducted under those conditions, of course. Thin
gs had been that way since the first shot, at Pittsfield. But with a difference. In those earlier situations, the enemy always wore civvies and the others carried police badges. It was possible to draw a line between the two forces and to confine the war to the true enemy. Bolan felt no enmity toward the cops and other legal authorities. They were simply upholding the law. By any standard of law, Bolan was wrong and they were right. Bolan understood that and accepted it. He also understood his own imperatives. He was not, in his own understanding, a criminal except in the sense that he evaded due process of law. He would not compromise that position, and he would not knowingly attack those who were simply discharging their duties under the law.
So, yeah, he was now in a crisis situation, and he knew it. If that was genuine U.S. Army out there, hunting his head in a bonafide government operation … well, okay, the war was probably over. He would use every available maneuver to slip clear of the kill zone without direct contact, but it seemed highly doubtful that he could succeed in that. Contact would very probably be made. And the war would end right there, at that point of contact.
So, yes, it was very important that he identify that killer force. He would not hand over his head to just anyone.
Such was the line of thought that sent Mack Bolan through those final hours of that dismal night in the Colorado high country.
As soon as the intelligence data had been reduced to its most usable form, he transferred a thoughtful selection of it to a small attaché case with a shoulder strap. Then he put on Levi’s and a heavy woolen shirt, mountain boots, the Beretta shoulder rig, and a warm jacket. Finally he snugged-in the warwagon and activated the security system. The battle cruiser was, for the moment, a distinct liability. She would remain in the relatively safe harbor of the public campground for awhile. For wheels, he went from the sublime to the ridiculous: a tiny trailbike from the warwagon’s cargo hold. Then he backtracked to Pleasant Valley in search of wheels with a bit more stretch to them.
Colorado Kill-Zone Page 3