Colorado Kill-Zone

by Don Pendleton

  “Are you game?” he asked her.

  She jerked her head in an affirmative nod. Bolan led the way, showing her how, and they dropped together.

  To hell with manual skis. Mack Bolan intended to get himself some motorized ones.

  Then maybe he and his ski goddess could make like snow birds and fly, fly away. It was a whole new game, now—and the name of it was disengagement. He had to make it back to the war-wagon and send word to keep the president in Washington.

  The “warmup” was over, and the main event was coming up. The president was a ski enthusiast and, sure, back in that melange of time out of sync Bolan could see the announcement of some weeks earlier that the guy would be in Colorado at first snow, to officially open the new ski season.

  But why the president? What the hell did anyone hope to accomplish by knocking the guy off?

  Those were questions which would have to find their own time. For now, the task was to break clear and get the alarm going down.

  He pushed the ski goddess face down into the snow and commanded her to remain there, then began his move—circling out to the rear and doubling back in an arcing approach to the dead zone.

  And time was still out of sync. Barely two minutes had elapsed since he’d entered the house. The visibility was holding at about twenty feet, but that was about the only condition that had not changed radically. A wind was coming up, now, and driving the falling flakes in a slanting drop. A barrage of sound was coming with the slant, hot little internal combustion engines, in numbers and in steady approach.

  Bolan had to rely entirely upon audibles to feel the moment. Six sounded right, yeah—about six, coming in like the spokes of a wheel toward its hub, moving cautiously in the near-zero visibility conditions, converging on the house. At about fifty feet out, someone out there fired a shot from a handgun. Then, silence descended as all engines sputtered out. A strong voice came down on the wind: “One and Six, hold present position. Two and Five, form a bracket at the rear. Four, back me up. I’m going inside.”

  “Watch it, Charley,” a worried voice called back. “Sammy counted five shots. Could mean anything.”

  Bolan was moving in on them, placing his feet carefully while moving with all possible speed in the treacherous underfooting.

  A voice very closeby was chuckling with some private joke. Another said, “Cut that. What’s the hell’s to laugh about?”

  “Maybe,” replied the chuckler, “Miss Hardass got the drop on Terrible Tom and gave ’im what he’s got coming.”

  “Shut up,” said the other, disgustedly.

  Four engines roared to life and the approach resumed. One was coming straight toward Bolan. He held his position and lifted Big Thunder—the .44 AutoMag—into the confrontation.

  The snow buggy came from nowhere, materializing suddenly as a dark bulk from somewhere beyond space and time—and Bolan had been mistaken about the visibility factor. It was no more than ten feet out and moving cautiously forward, straight at him. Bolan was all in white and no doubt invisible at anything more than armlength distance. The two men in that open vehicle very likely died without knowing that they did so, the big silver hawgleg thundering its two-word greeting in such rapid sequence as to blur into a single report. Both men were practically decapitated by the big mushroom bullets, even though Bolan had targeted entirely by zone trajectory. Time out of sync, sure. He had not seen them until they were dead and tumbling from the vehicle. The engine lugged out and died at Bolan’s side. He climbed in and ran his hands along the controls, feeling for an understanding and quickly coming to it. It was like a motorcycle, with handlebar controls.

  Meanwhile, all other vehicles had come to a halt, engines again shutting down. A guy near the house shouted, “Who fired? Horse?”

  “Not me,” came the reply, from nearby.

  “Who fired? Dammit! Let’s have a roll call!”

  Distant voices were shouting numbers at each other as Bolan found the final secret and started the engine. He moved out immediately, traveling recklessly and navigating entirely by instinct in what he hoped was a backtrack along his own path. The sound of his own engine was drowning out all other sounds about him. He had no audible input from the enemy force, but he did sense their concerned movements. Then the house loomed up in his forward vision. He sailed on around to the rear, collected his passenger, and headed for open spaces.

  She clung to his arm and cried, “Marvelous, marvelous!”

  But Bolan was not so certain of that. For all he knew, they could be heading straight toward a free jump down the mountainside.

  The events of the past twenty-four hours had finally caught up with him, collected in his wearied bones, and were now trying to crush him. That vertigo sensation, experienced briefly at Rollins Pass, had returned.

  He halted the little ski buggy and told the goddess of skis: “You take it. Let’s find that lift house.”

  “We should be very close,” she told him, moving into place as Bolan vacated the control seat.

  Very close, yeah. And it hadn’t been vertigo. As he stepped down onto the snow beside the vehicle, he found himself poised at the very brink of a steep downhill slope.

  All instinctive systems were A-OK. It had, of course, been a damn quick 300 meter run. But that’s the way it was, sometimes, with gods and goddesses of the ski—and with time out of frame.

  “Stay put,” he told the lady. “And don’t make a sound. I’ll find your brother.”

  He hoped he would. At that moment he could not have found his own feet had they not been attached to him. And the sounds were swirling about that small plateau, now—the angry and determined sounds of trained ski troops forming into a hunt and kill exercise. Another warmup, perhaps.

  The “first snow” weekend lay but one night away.

  And Mack Bolan was already having second thoughts concerning his ability to survive even these next few minutes.

  14: FOR LIFE

  Those guys obviously knew what they were doing, which was more than Bolan could say for himself. He was relying on instincts and quick reactions. They had the advantage of numbers, of familiarity with the terrain, and of trained military responses to the peculiarities of the situation.

  The military use of skis was not exactly a new idea. The Lapps and the Finns had used them in the hunt as early as 3000 B.C., and there had been military applications throughout the recorded history of the frigid zones. The first ski manual of instructions was prepared by a Norwegian army captain in the early eighteenth century, and at about that same time and place, the first ski competitions were organized within the Norwegian military as a means of encouraging excellence among the troops.

  No, it was not a new military idea. Only the sporting aspect of skiing was relatively new. These guys had a new twist, of course—the snowmobile—and they had obviously worked out some highly effective maneuvers and techniques to make the most of it. If they had seemed confused and vulnerable in that first contact, it was probably chiefly because they had not been entirely certain of the situation confronting them. They knew now, and not even the restricted visibility would stay them in their mission for long. All they had to do was to pick up Bolan’s trail in the fresh snow, and the rest would be simple military precision. They had the advantage of numbers and terrain orientation. They would hem him in, run him down, and rub him out—one, two, three—as simple as that.

  Unless …

  The combat mind had instantly circumscribed the military situation existing on that stormswept plateau in the Rockies and seized a decisive plan of action. It was a long shot, but at least it was a shot.

  “Change of plans,” he told the lady, and ordered her off of the vehicle. “Which way to the lift house?”

  She took her bearings from the slope and unhesitatingly pointed the way.

  Bolan did not wish to leave a trail of footprints, from this point. “Get up on the vehicle and take a dive,” he instructed her.

  She understood instantly, complying
without question.

  It was a good one. He could barely perceive her landing point.

  He carefully jockeyed the little buggy away from the slope’s edge and turned her about on a ninety-degree right angle to the previous course, then put her underway and jammed the throttle at half-open before leaping clear.

  The snowmobile chugged on across the flatland and Bolan rejoined the lady. He sat in the snow beside her, Big Thunder up and ready in a two-hand grip—and again she understood, not moving, barely breathing.

  Almost instantly another vehicle materialized along the backtrack and slid to a halt. Bolan could not see the men, but he could clearly hear their conversation.

  “Damn! Did he go over?”

  “Naw. Got out for a look-see then headed east. Fire three.”

  The girl beside him twitched as three quick shots were fired from that vehicle and the pursuit continued. The snowmobile chugged on out of sight, moving cautiously.

  “What were they shooting at?” she whispered.

  “Chase signal,” he told her. “Probably geared to the compass points. Three shots means tracking east.”

  “What now?” she asked, moving that lovely face close to his.

  “We hope,” he replied, “it takes them a couple of minutes to learn they’re tracking an empty vehicle. We find your brother and we find some skis—some nice light, cross-country skis. Then we head west, and hope to God you have a feel for the terrain around here.”

  “West is downslope,” she reminded him. “Very hazardous in these conditions.”

  “Not as hazardous as east,” he pointed out, and helped her to her feet. “What sort of lift do you have?”

  “It’s a simple rope tow.”

  “Okay,” he decided, “we’ll take that route. You be thinking about where we go from there. I guess it’s mostly in your hands now, Undy.”

  She did not reply, but moved off quickly toward the lift house.

  And, yeah, Bolan felt that he’d known this lady for a long, long while.

  The brother, Sondre, was something of a surprise to Bolan. Very young, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, a blond giant of a Norseman with very little command of the English language. He was understandably hostile and suspicious of Bolan, wretchedly cold, frightened, probably very hungry. He’d been bound hand and foot, covered with a light blanket, and left alone in the unheated building since early that morning.

  The woman quickly explained the situation to him, using the native tongue, and the three moved hurriedly to the outfit shop for a selection of equipment and warmer togs for Sondre.

  The procedure was consuming far too much time, and Bolan was trying to hurry them along when a mild argument erupted between brother and sister.

  “What’s the problem?” Bolan demanded.

  “Sondre maintains we should not attempt downslope,” she reported.

  “Tell Sondre,” Bolan replied heavily, “that the beast is east and west is best.”

  She smiled at that and relayed the advice to her brother. He smiled, also, and gave a brief response in Norwegian.

  “Sondre says—it is a paraphrase—go west, young man, and meet your maker.”

  If they could joke about it, okay, Bolan felt much better about the situation. They were a spunky pair, and they would need all of that they could muster. A sense of humor would not hurt a damn thing.

  Another insurrection surfaced outside, however, as the three were linking themselves together on a life line. The wind was now beginning to howl and a premature nightfall was adding further complications to the environmental problem.

  “What now?” Bolan growled.

  “Mr. Bolan,” Undy replied, picking her words tactfully, “Sondre is an Olympic skier. He insists that we will not survive the slopes in these weather conditions. The wind is rising. We could be in blizzard conditions at any moment. The others will be as hampered as we. They will be forced to call off the chase. Sondre knows of an overhanging rock ledge, nearby, where we may construct a snow cave and delay in safety.”

  There was wisdom in that argument, of course, but it was a limited wisdom, unmindful of some deeper truths. There was really no time for this discussion. Bolan knew his enemy, but he knew also that it would be impossible to thread the needle of survival unless all three were proceeding with a singleness of plan and purpose.

  “Tell Sondre,” he argued quietly, “—this, too, is a paraphrase—we have to run like hell where angels fear to tread. Our one advantage is the enemy’s immobility. When it’s safe for them to move, we cannot. Now it’s got to be the devil or the deep blue sea. The mountain or their guns, which does he prefer?”

  The kid did not smile at that translation. He threw down the life line and delivered an emphatic retort which his sister did not hasten to interpret.

  “What’d he say?” Bolan growled.

  “Sondre says—you are no different than the others. Guns and killing is your only life. He wishes no part.”

  Great. A beautiful speech, in almost any other situation. But not in this one.

  “Do you share his feeling, Undy?”

  She dug in her ski poles and stared straight ahead. “I do not wish their plan to succeed.”

  “Does Sondre understand the situation?”

  “He understands.”

  “Tell him that I respect his decision to die a peaceful man. That does not mean, of course, that he will meet a peaceful death.”

  She told him, and the kid seemed to be wavering for a moment, but then he executed a beautiful kick turn, dug in his poles, and glided off across the flats, disappearing from view immediately.

  The woman called after him in a faint voice, then turned pained eyes to the big grim man beside her. “He will die?”

  Bolan nodded, and his voice was soft with regret as he replied, “It’s not an Olympic game.”

  “You can save him?”

  Probably not. He could, of course, die trying. It was not the fear of dying that gave Bolan pause but the relativities of responsibility. And what it boiled down to, finally, was the relativities of life itself. Was the life of the president more important than …?

  A guy could go on forever saving himself for some supreme moment, and commit an endless number of atrocities in the process. Or he could live his life as though each moment were a supreme one.

  Bolan dropped the life line and told the goddess of the ski, “I can try, Undy. Go into the outfit shop and barricade the door. You’ll probably hear a lot of commotion. If I’m not back shortly after that—go west, young lady.”

  Then Skade glided away to take on the beast of the east in open combat.

  The great difference in men of similar talents lay not so much in what they did but why they did it.

  Mack Bolan was a man who did what he had to do.

  And, yes, there was a difference.

  15: OPTIONS

  The kid had been right about one thing, anyway. Gusting winds were howling across that plateau with force enough to give an almost horizontal movement to the falling snow, which itself was abating not a bit. Blizzard conditions were in the making and imminent. The wind chill factor was producing a dramatic effect upon the air temperature, a sub-zero effect. To all purposes, night had fallen. The trail left by Sondre’s skis was barely visible, the impressions in the snow filling rapidly under the onslaught of wind and fresh snow.

  Even the sounds of that frozen hellground were becoming muted, though no less intense. Bolan could still follow the play by ear, and it was quite obvious that the snortzenzoomer corps had already discovered the trail which Bolan was following.

  And they were damned good, those guys. They were literally running blind, yet obviously conducting methodical search patterns which had to depend entirely upon timing and perhaps a system of audible signals.

  Bolan was reading the play as he tracked it, relying upon the story impressed upon the snowbed as well as the sounds in the air. He crossed the moment of initial contact—a double track of snowmobile dis
turbances crossing in a circle over the finer run of cross-country skis—a peel-out and reversal of direction by one buggy. And there was the pattern. They were ellipsing the track, running paired opposites to each other in an ever-widening pattern which would inexorably tighten an ever dwindling area of confinement for the quarry.

  Another pair had jumped in, forty feet beyond the initial moment of contact. And now there were four running those shrinking elliptical patterns.

  Bolan was beginning to understand their audibles, also. They were using engine sounds to signal turns and approaches, clutching in and revving the engine in number sequences—a precision drill team, running in the blind, and the drill was death.

  Where the hell had they learned it? Not here, for sure—not this year—there had been no time since first snow to develop such skills. How long had these people been preparing for this mission?

  Bolan’s consciousness was evenly divided now—half of it reading the situation, the other half seeking a tactical solution. And, sure, there was a way to fight these guys. The largest problem was presented by Sondre, himself. Bolan could launch a grenade attack, targeting on their own audibles—but he would very likely end up killing the kid, as well, and where would be the profit in that?

  No. He could not play it from the outside. He would have to pierce that elliptical shell of containment, enter the heart of it, get the kid beside him, and play the game from there.

  And he had to do it in a matter of seconds.

  He was running with the play, crouched almost double with his weight forward over the skis to read Sondre’s tracks, isolated in the swirling atmosphere, the soft sounds of his own advance crushed by the moaning wind and zooming motors. The kid had slowed and perhaps halted completely, aware of his predicament and immobilized by indecision. Whatever the situation in there, Bolan had overtaken the center of activity and he was ready to make his move.

  He timed the audibles for the crossing at the base of the new ellipse, then dug in his poles and leapt forward to thread the gap between the crossing vehicles. The machines were powering up his flanks to either side, at a distance of no more than ten to fifteen feet, closing up in the climb and sending position audibles to the other pair coming down from the top. Forty feet, then, from tip to tip, and closing constantly. They had their man in the pocket and they knew it. Any moment, now, the turkeyshoot would begin.