Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan)

by Pendleton, Don

  “Don’t worry, she’s in good hands,” Eppard assured the Executioner.

  “Just call the number I gave you once you have her checked in,” Bolan responded. “Will do.”

  Bolan quietly closed the door and stepped back from the vehicle. Eppard slowly backed up, then turned the sedan and started back down the long driveway. Bolan watched the car until it disappeared around the first bend, then turned and headed past the police’s Yamaha ATVs to the Crown Victoria. Tribal Police Sergeant Cecil Farris, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a retro crew cut, stood hunched alongside the vehicle, leaning across the front seat to make use of the dispatch transceiver. As he waited for Farris to finish his call, Bolan tested his sore shoulder and glanced into the night sky. The cloud cover had long since moved out of the area, leaving the heavens dotted with as many bright, shining stars as Bolan could ever remember seeing. He could also see a jetliner streaking through the sky far to the south, and just a few miles away a helicopter drifted high above the hills, its rotors barely audible. Bolan was still watching the chopper and working his shoulder when Farris approached him.

  “Shuttle chopper from the airport,” Farris explained. “Lots of high rollers can’t wait to get here and start losing.”

  “I know the type,” Bolan said.

  “Shoulder acting up?” Farris asked.

  “Not that much.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Farris said. “That taxi plunge sounds like it was one hell of a ride.”

  Bolan gestured at the dispatch radio. “Any news?”

  Farris nodded. “That was Taos. A black-and-white just showed up at Orson’s place. They’ve got some kind of situation up there, but they aren’t sure what to make of it yet.”

  “What’d they find?”

  “For starters, Orson’s dead,” Farris said. “Taken out at close range with two rounds from a .25 caliber.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Bolan said. His hopes for Franklin Colt had just diminished, as well.

  “Whoever did it took out Orson’s dog, too,” Farris went on. “Male terrier inside his work lab. They say it looks like the lab was ransacked, but there’s no way of knowing at this point what was taken.”

  “Colt told us Orson was loading some things to bring down to the tech expo.”

  “Well, DMV has him registered with a Chevy Silverado pickup,” Farris said. “No sign of it on the property. You gotta figure it’s gone along with whatever he was planning to bring.”

  “What about clues?” Bolan asked.

  “Nothing but shell casings so far,” Farris said. “They’re getting walloped by the same storm we got, so there’s not going to be much chance of finding footprints. Right now they’re searching the other structures on the property to see what else they can come up with.”

  Bolan absorbed the news. He didn’t like the way things were adding up.

  “I don’t see how Orson ties into Colt being kidnapped,” he told Farris, “but there has to be a link. And they sent at least four guys after Colt.”

  “Which means we’ll likely have our hands full if they wind up here,” Farris said. “Of course, there’s a chance we’re wrong about this. They might not show.”

  “True,” Bolan said, “but all we’ve got to go on is that map they found in the panel truck. I like the odds.”

  “I hope you’re right. I like the odds better, too, when they come to us instead of the other way around.”

  “We’d better finish setting up.”

  Farris nodded again. “I’ll get our wheels behind that gristmill over there so it’ll look like it’s just the wife here.”

  “Good idea,” Bolan said.

  “You want to take the house?” Farris suggested. “I can keep an eye on things out here.”

  “Done.”

  As Farris wandered over to speak with three tribal police officers standing alongside the ATVs, Bolan surveyed the grounds. Eppard’s two other friends had already stationed themselves out in the darkness, one near the gristmill’s massive water wheel, the other a few rows out into the cornfield. Once the tribal officers took up their positions, Bolan felt certain they’d have set an adequate trap should Colt’s abductors send men after his wife, but he knew better than to figure the game was already won. Whatever stakes the kidnappers were playing for, it was clear they were high enough to kill for, and when lives were considered expendable, it had always been the Executioner’s experience that there would be no end to the bloodshed until the enemy got what it was after or was put down. Either way, he knew it was unlikely that things would resolved without a fight.

  THE TOYOTA CAMRY CARRYING Gwenyth Colt and her young son slowed to a stop as it reached the end of the mile-long driveway leading from their home. The property was fenced off and the main gate was drawn closed.

  “Franklin’s been meaning to fix the tension spring,” Gwen told Jeffrey Eppard. “It slams shut automatically.”

  “Yeah, we noticed that when we came in,” Eppard’s nephew said. “I’ll get it.”

  Leeland got out of the Camry and closed the door behind him before heading toward the gate. In the backseat, Frankie stirred and opened his eyes. Gwen turned to him and stroked his forehead.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “We’re going for a little ride, okay? Go back to sleep.”

  “Where are we going?” the boy asked.

  Before Gwen could respond, the front side passenger door suddenly swung open. Gwen was confused, as was Eppard; his nephew was still out on the driveway, drawing the gate open. Pffftttt.

  Eppard’s head snapped to one side and Gwen let out a scream as she felt herself being spattered by blood. The front door closed again, and she caught a glimpse of the gunman quickly circling around the front of the Toyota. It was a man dressed in dark clothes, a full-face ski mask drawn over his head. Gwen watched with horror as the man fired at Leeland. Eppard’s nephew had a gun on him but he crumpled to the ground without having a chance to draw it.

  “Mommy?” Frankie called out, frightened by his mother’s screams.

  Gwen instinctively drew closer to her son and leaned across him as the gunman yanked open the driver’s door and poked his head into the vehicle.

  “Shut him up or I will!” he commanded, aiming his sound-suppressor-equipped pistol at Frankie as he reached under the dashboard, triggering the latch release for the rear trunk.

  “Mommy?” Franklin cried out again.

  “Shh.” Gwen placed a finger over her son’s lips and did her best to sound calm, even as her heart raced with fear. “Shh, just be quiet, okay? Be a brave little boy.”

  Frankie nodded but began to whimper softly, tears coming to his eyes.

  By now five more men had materialized out of the darkness. Two of them hunched over Leeland then hoisted the young man’s body between them and carried it toward the car. Another man circled to the rear of the vehicle and popped open the trunk. The shooter who’d killed both men, meanwhile, grabbed Eppard by the armpits and dragged him from the driver’s seat. The two remaining men closed in and took charge of the body, carrying it back to the rear of the car as the gunman took Eppard’s place behind the wheel. Moments later, the Camry jostled slightly and Gwen flinched at the sound of the two slain men being unceremoniously dumped into the trunk.

  This can’t be happening, she thought to herself.

  Once the trunk slammed shut, one of the other men circled the vehicle and got into the backseat next to Frankie. Gwen was on the other side. The second man, like the driver, wore a full-face ski mask. He grinned malevolently at Frankie and said, “Boo!”

  Gwen had to hold herself back from lashing out at the man.

  “Where are you taking us?” she whispered, barely able to get the words out.

  “Good news,” the man beside her replied as his cohort shifted the sedan into gear and passed through the opened gateway. “We’re taking you to a little family reunion.”

  Frankie could no longer control himself. He let out a deep sob and beg
an to scream.

  “Hey, hey,” the man beside him said with icy calm. “We’re going to see your daddy. Do you want him to think you’re a big crybaby?”

  AS HE WATCHED THE Camry head down the service road leading toward the distant, gleaming lights of the Roaming Bison Casino, Viktor Cherkow shed his ski mask and led the remaining men back to a wide gully where, in a clearing surrounded by narrow-leafed cottonwoods, Ivan Nesterov sat at the controls of the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter that had brought them to the reservation from Glorieta. The twelve-passenger chopper was part of an aerial fleet belonging to MidState Air Charter Services, a subsidiary of Evgenii Danilov’s Global Holdings Corporation. The Sikorsky, as Sergeant Farris had pointed out to Bolan, was normally used as a shuttle service for high rollers looking to beeline to the casino from Albuquerque International, but this night it had been pressed into duty of quite another nature.

  “So far, so good,” Cherkow told the pilot while two of his colleagues hurriedly raided the aircraft’s storage compartment for an assortment of assault rifles, grenades and incendiary devices. “Now’s when things get a little tricky.”

  “We saw them spreading out around the house,” Nesterov replied. “Are you sure you don’t want to just come in by air?”

  Cherkow shook his head, holstering his Viking pistol in favor of a Russian-made PP-2000 submachine gun handed to him by one of the other men. As with the pistols used in the gateway ambush, the subgun had been outfitted with a sound suppressor.

  “We’ll have a better element of surprise if we sneak up on them,” he said. Tapping his earbud transceiver, he quickly added, “If we need backup, though, you’ll hear about it. Otherwise, just stay put and wait for a pickup order.”

  “Understood,” the pilot said.

  Cherkow moved away from the chopper and led the others back up the service road. Once they’d passed through the gate he told them, “All right. Everyone spread out and make your approach the way we discussed. Do your best to take everyone down before they can get any shots off. If we can take the house without incident, we’ll search it top to bottom, then move out.”

  “And if there are problems?” one of the men asked.

  Cherkow grinned, patting the incendiary grenade he’d just clipped to his ammo belt. “If we can’t get inside the house, we’ll destroy it along with any evidence Colt might have stashed there.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The interior of the Colt home was as modest and inauspicious as the exterior. Paver tiles lined the floor of the sparsely furnished main room, and the walls were white and unadorned except for a large oil family portrait hung proudly over the fireplace. There were Native American artifacts—three ancient Anasazi pots and a ceremonial Kokopelli doll—displayed on the mantel, and a simple wrought-iron chandelier hung suspended over the dining-room table. The chandelier worked off a dimmer switch, and Bolan had its lights turned low so that as he maintained his vigil he could see his way around without casting a silhouette against the closed drapes. The house was eerily quiet except for the dull murmur of the refrigerator and an occasional creaking of the exposed rafters spanning the raised ceiling.

  There was a flashlight on the hearth next to a fire extinguisher and an antique kindling box. Bolan took the light with him to a darkened alcove adjacent to the living room. A small writing desk faced a shuttered window overlooking the backyard. It was covered with paperwork, a handful of books, a deck of cards and an old cigar box filled with toy soldiers. There were a series of drawers as well, but much as he was tempted to search through them in hopes of finding some possible clue to Colt’s abduction, Bolan wasn’t about to violate the man’s privacy any more than he already had by entering the house without a warrant.

  Bolan spotted a small, framed black-and-white photo propped in front of the shutters on the recessed windowsill. He shone the flashlight on it and found himself staring at a much younger Franklin Colt sitting across from John Kissinger in what looked to be some kind of country bar. They were lofting their beer glasses and grinning with a carefree ease that suggested the photograph was taken before the gunshot injury that cut short Colt’s tenure with DEA. Bolan wondered if Colt had recently taken the photo out of storage or if he’d had it on display all these years.

  The Executioner’s ruminations were interrupted by the sound of gunfire on the property. He quickly set down the photograph and switched off the flashlight. Assault rifle in hand, he strode back to the main room. He’d made it as far as the dining-room table when the front door swung open. Bolan held his fire when Sergeant Farris lurched inside, one hand clutched to his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers, turning them red. In his other hand was his service pistol. Another shot thumped into the door as he was slamming it shut.

  “So much for wondering if they’d show up,” he muttered, sagging against the doorjamb. “I don’t know how many of them there are but—”

  Farris’s voice was drowned out by a tinkling of glass. Bolan whirled in the direction of the living-room picture window. The curtains rustled where something had just struck them and a second later a projectile dropped into view on the paver tiles.

  Grenade, Bolan thought. He was already in motion, diving instinctively to his right. He made it halfway behind a large sofa before the incendiary device went off, filling the room with light and smoke. The thunderous blast shattered more of the windows and echoed loudly through the house, triggering a sensor alarm mounted to one of the overhead rafters. A light began to blink on and off at regular intervals, punctuated by a shrill, staccato bleeping.

  The smoke stung Bolan’s eyes and lungs as he drew himself up behind the sofa. Through the noxious cloud he could see flames eating away at the front curtains and spreading across the tiles toward the dining area. Leaving his rifle behind, he held his breath, charged to the window and yanked down the curtains, then dropped them onto the pavers and stomped out the flames. The danger wasn’t over yet, however. Behind him, a throw rug as well as the dining-room tablecloth had caught fire. The alarm continued its torturous bleating as Bolan bolted to the hearth and grabbed the fire extinguisher. He yanked off the safety ring and directed the nozzle at the spreading fire. He doused the rug until the flames died, then took aim at the table, scattering the jigsaw puzzle on its top with a foamy jet of fire retardant. The flames were snuffed out but the tablecloth smoldered, adding to the smoke.

  Bolan couldn’t hold his breath any longer. Casting aside the extinguisher, he rushed to the kitchen area, hacking from the acrid smoke. He ran the faucet and held a dishcloth under the running water, then clutched the cloth to his face and ventured back into the living room. The alarm continued to shriek and throw off its spastic light. Bolan retrieved his rifle and peered up through the smoke, then took aim and put a slug through the alarm’s plastic shell, obliterating it as well as the wiring inside. The house went dark, and there was a moment of silence before a hail of gunfire sang through the exposed window and whisked past Bolan, slamming into the wall behind him. He threw himself onto the floor and crawled toward the door, carrying his AR-15 with him. Farris had collapsed onto the tiles, as well. The officer coughed as he stared through the smoke. Bolan saw the all too familiar look of a man who sensed his wounds might be fatal.

  “I’ll be all right,” he gasped. “Go give ’em hell.”

  “And just leave you?” Bolan said. “Sorry, I don’t work that way.”

  AFTER FIRING THE SHOT that struck Farris and lobbing his incendiary grenade through Franklin Colt’s front window, Viktor Cherkow had crouched back behind the cover of a ramshackle toolshed in the front yard. It was from this position that he’d subsequently unleashed the shots that had just missed Bolan. Cherkow was an expert marksman and it had been more than the sudden darkness inside the house that had thrown off his aim.

  “It can’t be!” the Russian whispered incredulously as he stared at the shattered window. He’d only had a fleeting glimpse of his target and he knew there was a chance the smoke and fire alarm�
�s strobe light had deceived him, but in the split second before Bolan had shot out the alarm, Cherkow had hesitated with his trigger, dumbfounded to realize he was staring at one of the men Colt had been speaking with outside the terminal at Albuquerque International. It didn’t seem possible. Cherkow himself had rear-ended the taxi the man had leaped into prior to giving chase to Nesterov and the other men who’d abducted Colt. He’d watched the taxi go off the road and plunge into Tijeras Arroyo. With his own eyes he’d seen the cab sink beneath the current without any survivors coming to the surface. And yet there he was: the same man! If he could manage it, Cherkow now wanted the man taken alive so he could be questioned, not only about what Colt might have told him, but also about how he’d managed to cheat death in the storm channel.

  At least one of the other SVR agents had been taken out in the first moments of the seige. Cherkow was about to call out for the others to leave the mystery man to him when an incoming round pulverized one of the shed’s planks, stinging his face with shrapnel. Cherkow cursed and spun to his right, tracing the shot to the gristmill. He spotted one of Jeffrey Eppard’s friends crouched near the water wheel and quickly returned fire, dropping the other shooter with a burst of Parabellum rounds to the chest.

  “See you in hell!” he taunted his victim as he wiped at the fresh blood trickling alongside the scar on his cheek. “But not tonight.”

  THE SMOKY HAZE BEGAN to dissipate slightly as it drifted through the house, but even with the dampened washcloth Bolan still found it difficult to breathe. Reaching up, he threw open the front door. He could hear gunfire outside but none of the shots were being directed his way. Rising to a squat, he cast aside the cloth and grabbed Farris under the arms then slowly dragged him outside. The tribal cop tried to wave him off, but he was too weak to put up much resistance.