“How soon can I expect to hear from her?”
“I’ll tell her to drop what she’s doing and have something for you first thing after lunch,” Mikhaylov offered. “If you want some input before then, I’ll tell her you’re coming by and you can sit in while they’re brainstorming.”
“I like that idea better.”
“Then we’re all set,” Mikhaylov said. “I’ll call her right now.”
The Russian quickly wrapped up the call, then clicked off and spewed a flurry of epithets as he stormed across the small room and unearthed a fresh bottle of vodka from the case stashed in the bottom of a closet built into the north wall. He cracked the seal and guzzled a few shots’ worth, then refilled his flask before putting the bottle back. He hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and his body was quick to respond to the alcohol as it raced through him, partially quelling an anxiety that gnawed at him.
Just before speaking with Stuart he’d gotten a troubled call from Captain Brown not only about the rescue of the federal agent involved in the confrontation at Colt’s place but also her concern that some woman who’d been sniffing around the reservation might be an undercover government agent, as well. Troubling as those disclosures had been, they paled compared to his third wake-up call of the morning: word from Evgenii Danilov that none other than Dmitri Vishnevsky would be accompanying Melido Diaz to the States to “assist” with the situation in New Mexico. Danilov had assured the Butcher that it would only be a temporary arrangement, but Mikhaylov knew the man was lying. He felt betrayed. The son of a bitch hadn’t even given him a chance to bring things under control before deciding on another option. That he’d turned to Vishnevsky of all people had only added insult to injury.
Mikhaylov booted up his laptop as he quickly dispensed with his call to Roaming Bison’s Public Relations Director Elizabeth Penbrooks. Penbrooks was in the middle of putting together the next month’s casino promotions and balked at gathering the work aside to deal with Stuart, but Mikhaylov stressed the urgency and secured her promise that she’d tend to matters. By the time he’d hung up, Mikhaylov’s computer was up and running and he’d already navigated to his mailbox, where Danilov had forwarded the cell-phone video footage Vishnevsky had earlier sent to both him and SVR Deputy Director Alex Repin. Danilov had already described the bloodbath Vishnevsky had just orchestrated in Bolivia, but as Mikhaylov watched the footage of the collapsing Inca Treasure casino, he could feel still more salt being poured onto his wounded pride.
He watched the footage twice, then switched to a search engine and typed the words Santa Cruz casino bombing as well as Dominic Fishciel, the name Vishnevsky went by at the Andean Splendor. There were already dozens of Web site stories about the bombing, most of which stated that Bolivia’s renegade National Liberation Army had claimed responsibility, citing Alfredo Cavour’s long-standing opposition to the group as the reason for their attack. The few times Vishnevsky’s alias showed up in the same articles was in the context of his denouncing the incident and offering a two-million-dollar reward for the arrest and conviction of those behind it.
“Nice touch,” Mikhaylov muttered bitterly. He next switched to the search engine’s option to seek out visual images of “Dominic Fishciel” and was stunned to see how Vishnevsky had transformed himself from an anemic scarecrow into a what looked like a muscle-bound freak of nature with bad skin and a vanishing hairline. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the haughty gleam in Vishnevsky’s slate-gray eyes.
Thrown, Mikhaylov felt his anxiety battling back against the alcohol. He pushed away from his desk and was halfway back to his closet when he heard someone enter the milk shed and head toward the inside door to his quarters. He veered from the locker and grabbed his jacket, then called out as he stabbed his arms through the sleeves.
“Who is it?”
“Tramelik.”
Mikhaylov relaxed slightly and opened the door, waving his colleague in.
“I’m just on my way to tend to Colt,” Mikhaylov said.
“I have some news first,” Tramelik said.
“Cherkow’s been taken care of?”
“He will be soon enough,” Tramelik replied. “He and Hedeon left a few minutes ago.”
It had been Tramelik’s suggestion to not only set up Cherkow as a fall guy for the attack at Colt’s property, but to also link him as the dealer who’d sold Donny Upshaw heroin in exchange for Alan Orson’s hoard of inventions. Mikhaylov had jumped at the idea and ordered Cherkow to accompany Hedeon Barad when the mechanic drove Orson’s repainted pickup to Santa Fe to buy bumper stickers and a camper shell. A side trip had been added to that particular mission. After further disguising the pickup, the men were to stop by an abandoned motel near Algodones, a half hour south of the capital, supposedly to close a deal for seven kilos of heroin earmarked for SVR’s street suppliers throughout the state. In truth, Tramelik had placed an order for only two kilos, which both he and Mikhaylov had agreed would be an acceptable sacrifice to make for having Cherkow killed in what two of Captain Brown’s undercover officers would make appear to be a drug deal gone wrong. One of their Colombian suppliers would have to be killed in the process but, again, it was deemed to be a necessary trade-off. Of course, the whereabouts of Orson’s inventions would remain a mystery, but evidence planted at the scene would lend credence to the theory that Cherkow had quickly turned around and sold the contraband on the black market in exchange for the money for the two kilos, in effect doubling the profit on the smack he’d purportedly bartered to Upshaw.
“What else has happened, then?” Mikhaylov said warily. “And let me forewarn you—I’ve had enough bad news dumped on my plate this morning to last a lifetime.”
Tramelik grinned. “I think you’ll make room on your plate for this,” he stated. “Try me.”
“For starters,” Tramelik said, “up in Taos they just found the Indian’s body where I dumped it off the bridge. They found the gun, too, and everyone’s already decided he jumped after killing Orson and his father.”
“If that holds up, it would definitely qualify as good news,” Mikhaylov admitted. “Probably not enough to change matters, but it couldn’t hurt.”
“Change what matters?” Tramelik wondered.
Mikhaylov answered with a question. “What do you think of Dmitri Vishnevsky?”
Tramelik turned his head and pretended to spit.
“Good,” Mikhaylov said. “Once I tell you what that bastard has arranged behind our backs, I think you’ll agree that it’ll be worthwhile for you to head back to Taos and help Vladik with another assignment.”
“You can tell me in a minute,” Tramelik responded. “First let me finish.”
“Is it really that important? This business with Vishnevsky is urgent.”
“So is this.” Tramelik reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “It won’t be necessary to have Vladik try to get to Upshaw’s other phone. I found the one Colt used to talk with him.”
When Tramelik handed him the device, Mikhaylov stared at it, dumbstruck. “Where did you find it?”
“I couldn’t sleep so I decided to go for a little drive,” Tramelik said. “To Albuquerque.”
“The impound yard.”
Tramelik nodded. “It’s a lot larger and busier than the one in Taos. You’d think they’d have better security.”
“I told you to wait on that.”
“You said to wait until Cherkow checked on Colt’s house,” Tramelik reminded the other man. “When he came up empty-handed, I thought back to Colt’s last conversation with Upshaw. The one I overheard yesterday morning.”
“About him wanting to run his evidence by someone with the government?”
Tramelik nodded again. “Remember? It’s the whole reason we had him followed to the airport in the first place. I figured if he didn’t have the phone on him and it wasn’t at his house, the only other place it could be was in his car. He had it tucked in a cavity beneath the dashboard.”
&
nbsp; “How ironic,” Mikhaylov mused.
“How’s that?”
“Cherkow told me he wanted to search the car more thoroughly after he knocked that taxi off the road,” Mikhaylov said. “The others talked him out of it.”
“Too bad he listened to them.”
“A fatal mistake as it turns out.” Rather than dwell on Cherkow’s pending demise, Mikhaylov turned his attention back to Colt’s cell phone.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Like everyone else, Colt never bothered to set a PIN code.”
“No, he didn’t,” Tramelik said, flipping the phone open. It quickly booted and lit up, going straight to a menu screen. He thumbed the keypad as he told Mikhaylov, “There aren’t any text messages, but the only calls are to Upshaw, all over the past two weeks.”
“Then we were right,” Mikhaylov said. “They each had a separate phone just for this.”
Tramelik nodded. “Now take a look at these.”
Mikhaylov stared at the phone screen as, one after the other, Tramelik uploaded a series of photos taken at night, half of them showing freight trucks bound along the service road leading to the reservation’s nuclear waste plant. The rest were taken from various vantage points behind the facility, where the trucks had parked while their cargo was transferred to the mountain bunkers by way of a tunnel whose entryway was normally camouflaged by large shrubs set in movable planters disguised to look like weed-covered mounds. Shown in sequence, the photos revealed, step-by-step, how centrifuges and other equipment for Operation Zenta was being delivered in the dead of night to the clandestine destination where they would be put to use in the making of nuclear warheads.
“Colt’s ‘smoking gun,’” Mikhaylov said. “When were these taken?”
“The night before last,” Tramelik said.
“One of Colt’s nights off.”
“It turns out he came to work after all,” Tramelik said. “Just not for us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rosqui Pueblo, New Mexico
With more than fifty-three square miles of reservation land to search, more than two hours had passed before Rosqui Tribal Police Officers Joseph Romano and Ryan Covina had made their way to Healer’s Ravine. They were up on the ridgeline trailing down from Mt. McCray, more than a hundred feet above the fast-moving river, riding side by side in one of the department’s Yahama ATVs. Romano was at the wheel while Covina scouted both sides of the mountain for any trace of the man depicted in the photocopy they’d been given back near Franklin Colt’s home. Covina had a Savage 110FP sniper rifle at the ready, and both men were additionally armed with police-issue 9 mm H&K pistols sheathed at their waists in black leather holsters.
After another twenty yards the ridgeline sloped down to a broad plateau, one section of which backtracked by way of a long, grassy incline to the river as well as grazing land for the reservation’s bison herd. The plateau itself was a patchwork of mesquite, prairie grass and raw earth turned to mud by the previous night’s rains. There were hoofprints in the mud left by bison that had strayed uphill during the stampede, but no manmade tracks. Up ahead, however, just beyond where the plateau dropped precipitously to the base of the ravine, the two officers spotted a wisp of smoke rising up from the gorge.
“Has to be those transients,” Covina murmured.
Romano slowed the Yamaha to a stop and killed the engine. “We might as well check it out.”
Covina readied the sniper rifle and Romano drew his pistol as they approached the precipice. Overhead, one of the news choppers began to drift toward them.
“Assholes,” Romano muttered. He glanced up and gestured angrily for the pilot to back off. The pilot partially obliged, pulling away but then rising into a holding position on the other side of the river, some two hundred yards away.
“I’d like to put a stray shot through that moron’s forehead,” Covina complained.
“I’d cover for you,” Romano replied, only half joking.
Covina turned his attention back to the plateau. He pointed out a set of hoofprints heading straight to the edge of the cliff. “Looks like one of the bison tried to pull an Evel Knievel.”
“My guess is he didn’t make it,” Romano said.
Once within a few yards of the drop-off, the men crouched low and flattened themselves atop the rain-soaked grass, preferring wet uniforms to the idea of crawling through mud. They wormed their way to a spot where a clump of mesquite helped conceal them while affording a view down into the refuse-littered ravine. A hundred feet directly below them, lying on its side, was the slain bison. Forty yards away, past the scattered trash and dumped appliances, four men huddled around the dying remnants of a campfire.
“What’d I tell ya?” Covina whispered. “Hobo jungle.”
“I don’t know,” Romano said, looking closely at the men. “The one on the far right looks like he’s been to a barber this century. Check him out.”
Covina reached for the minizoom binoculars clipped to his holster. He cupped the viewers in his palm to keep the sun from reflecting off its lenses, then peered through the mesquite, focusing on the man Romano had pointed out.
“Bingo,” he whispered. “He’s changed clothes, but that’s him all right.”
“Keep an eye on him,” Romano said, backing away from the ridge. “I’ll see if we’ve got men on the other side of the ravine so we can cover him from both sides.”
“Why don’t I just shoot him and be done with it?” Covina asked.
“We’ve got the eye-in-sky, remember?” Romano told him. “You wanna have to explain yourself on the six-o’clock news?”
Covina glanced back at the distant news chopper. “Assholes.”
“WELL, WHAT DO YA THINK?” Leonard asked Mack Bolan.
The Executioner extended his right leg and flexed it near the campfire. Beneath his borrowed jeans he’d wrapped gauze around an herb-soaked poultice pressed against the thigh bruise left by the bison that had struck him. The pain had lessened dramatically, as had the tightness.
“Feels fine,” he said. “Same with my shoulder.”
“What’d I tell ya?” Rafe said. “Leonard’s a one-man E.R.”
It wasn’t only Bolan’s thigh and shoulder that had improved. His fever was gone and, with it, the chills that had been rattling through him from the moment he’d awoken. His share of the bison had satisfied his hunger, as well.
“How about some dessert?” Astro suggested, holding out a clear plastic bag filled with doughnuts and muffins. “Take your pick.”
Bolan helped himself to what looked like an oatmeal muffin. “Somehow I didn’t think there was a bakery around here,” he said before biting into the snack.
“Every few days we go Dumpster diving behind the casino,” Rafe explained. “You won’t believe the stuff they throw out. Same with the cafeteria at the nuke plant.”
Bolan glanced at Rafe. “Nuke plant?”
“Correction,” Rafe said. “Nuclear waste plant. It’s just over the mountain. You didn’t know about it?”
Bolan shook his head, intrigued. He was about to ask more about the facility when he noticed the news copter hovering in the distance just beyond the river.
“All right if I build up the fire a little?” he asked. “I want to try to get that chopper’s attention.”
“What, you’re tired of our company?” Rafe teased.
“I owe you guys, all right?” Bolan told them. “I know that, but I’ve got things to take care of.”
“Well, go ahead with the fire,” Rafe told him, “but it’s not likely to do you much good. They’re gonna think you’re just another bum. No story there.”
“If that’s the case, why haven’t they moved on?” Bolan countered, tossing the muffin wrapper into the flames and then adding another couple branches of mesquite.
“You might have something there, Nick,” Astro said. He sat upright and stretched his arms a moment, then turned his head from one side to another as if trying to work out a kink
in his neck. When he lowered his arms, he set aside the pastry bag and let his hand drift to his right leg. Pulling up his pant leg, he slowly reached for a small Smith & Wesson .32 wedged in an ankle holster.
“Nobody make any quick moves or anything,” he whispered, “but we’ve got ourselves a party crasher.”
As he finished his muffin, Bolan slowly diverted his gaze and caught a glimpse of someone downhill through the thick overgrowth blanketing the steep slope.
“Looks like he’s packing,” he told the others. He was reaching for his pistol when a shot rang out, striking Astro in the upper arm.
“Son of a bitch!” Astro howled, dropping his gun and then quickly picking it up with his other hand.
Bolan and the others were already on the move, diving clear of the fire. Another shot whistled past the Executioner’s ear as he scrambled for the cover of the clawfoot bathtub he’d briefly considered spending the night in. Rafe and Leonard had made it to a cluster of boulders and had pulled out their own concealed weapons, both Ruger P90s. Astro, meanwhile, planted himself behind a rust-covered oven and returned fire, shouting, “Back the hell off! We aren’t bothering anyone!”
Astro was answered by a slug that clanged off the oven’s range top.
“Tribal police!” came a shout from the upper reaches of the ravine. “Toss your guns out where we can see them and then come out with your hands up!”
“Sorry, but I forgot to take my stupid pill this morning!” Astro shouted back. He glanced at the blood streaming down his wounded arm, just below his tattoo. Furious, he fired another round from his Smith & Wesson. “If you’re the cops, let’s see a badge!”
“Not stupid here, either!”
There was a lull in the firing. Bolan had his gun out. He had his doubts that they were being fired at by the tribal police, but he wasn’t about to shoot to kill until he was sure. He took aim uphill at an outcropping near where the gunman was crouched. When he tried to get off a warning shot, nothing happened. Frustrated, he jammed the gun back in his holster and called out to Rafe, “I need another piece.”
Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan) Page 16