Toxic Terrain

by Don Pendleton

  “Striker!” Barbara Price answered, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “You’re still alive!”

  “You had doubts?”

  “The last time the Bear heard from you, your conversation ended with automatic weapon fire that practically deafened him,” Price said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. Price was a consummate professional and wouldn’t let her personal feelings come into play during a mission, but Bolan could hear a hint of relief in her voice. Bolan and the beautiful blonde who was mission controller at Stony Man Farm had been occasional lovers for years.

  “Any new information on Ag Con?” Bolan asked.

  “Nothing on Ag Con, but we’ve dug up a bunch of information about their security firm.”

  “Who are they using?”

  “Build & Berg Associates.”

  “Why would they need a bunch of cutthroat mercenaries to guard a cattle ranch?” Bolan asked.

  “Good question,” Price replied. “They must have some mean coyotes out there.”

  “I think they’ve got more than that,” Bolan said. “I think they’ve bolstered the B&B mercs with some PLA regulars. I’m pretty sure the man who shot me wasn’t with B&B.”

  “You’ve been shot?”

  “It’s nothing,” Bolan said. “I’m all right. I’m in good hands.” He looked over at Kemp, who was listening to his end of the conversation as best she could over the engine noise.

  “How many B&B goons do they have on staff?” he asked.

  “According to their records, they’ve got 225, which makes no sense at all.”

  “None of this makes sense,” Bolan said. “Why would a corporate cattle operation want to kidnap a veterinarian and a county extension agent in the first place?”

  “You’ve confirmed that Ag Con has kidnapped Bowman and Grevoy?”

  “Affirmative,” Bolan said. “I saw them being taken from the facility in a helicopter. Something big is going on here.”

  “You’re right, Striker. We’ll keep looking into it on this end.”

  “You could start by seeing if you can find out where the helicopters took Bowman and Grevoy.”

  “We’ll do our best. Normally we’d be able to track them with satellites, but there aren’t a lot of eyes in the sky pointed at western North Dakota. We’ll see if we can find anything. In the meantime, you try not to get shot again.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Girlfriend?” Kemp asked once he’d hung up.

  “She’s a woman, and she’s a friend. She’s also a colleague.”

  “Is she your boss at your security consulting company?”

  “A contact,” he replied. “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace safe,” she said. She turned off the road and followed a barely discernable trail through a pasture until they came to a barbed-wire fence. “Open the gate,” Kemp ordered. Bolan did as he was told, closing the gate behind him and getting back into the ATV. He estimated they’d traveled about four miles when they came upon a cottage—a shack, really—with walls made of small-diameter stones. The structure looked as if it had been here for well over a century, but the shiny steel that covered the roof spoke of recent renovation.

  “We’re here,” Kemp said.

  “Where’s ‘here’?”

  Kemp got out of the ATV. Bolan followed her as she went behind the shack and unlocked the doors to a small wood-framed structure that stood about two feet high. Inside the structure sat a powerful generator, along with a pressure pump, indicating that the structure stood atop a water well.

  “‘Here’ is the hunting shack that Pam and I built when we were still together. Well, we didn’t really ‘build’ it, since this building has been here since before North Dakota was a state. I guess I should say that we remodeled it.” She primed the generator several times, pulled the choke, and the quiet engine started up. She unlatched the shingled roof of the small structure, which was on hinges, and propped it up with a two-by-four that had been attached to the underside of the roof, creating a vent through which the generator’s exhaust gases could escape while still protecting the generator from the elements.

  “Let’s go inside and get cleaned up,” she said.

  The interior of the cabin was simple but comfortable, a single room with a small closet-size area partitioned off for the toilet. The shower, consisting of a see-through plastic curtain surrounding a drain, with a hose running from a faucet to a showerhead suspended from the rafters, stood in one corner. “Since it was just the two of us using the place we didn’t see the need for privacy,” Kemp said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Bolan made himself comfortable, and Kemp scrubbed her hands in the sink. “Let me check your wound,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been so active so soon.”

  “I didn’t see a lot of options,” Bolan said.

  “You seem to attract trouble.”

  “It’s an occupational hazard.”

  Kemp looked at Bolan and started to make another comment about the nature of being a security consultant, but shut her mouth before any sound came out and just shook her head. She removed the bandage.

  “The stitches have held,” she said, “but you’re still bleeding.” She cleaned the wound, applied some antiseptic cream, then unlocked a metal cabinet on one wall and took out a can of heavy-duty wound sealant.

  “You’re lucky I’m equipped for dealing with large animals that are too dumb to lie around and heal up after they’ve been injured,” she said, spraying the sealant over the stitches that closed up the bullet’s entrance wound over the soldier’s shoulder. “Normally this is where I’d put some bitter-tasting spray on the wound to keep you from licking it, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I promise not to lick my wounds,” Bolan assured her.

  “This doesn’t look the first time you’ve taken a bullet,” Kemp said, looking up and down the big man’s bare torso. “It doesn’t look like the second, or even the tenth. Do you even know how many times you’ve been shot?”

  “I’ve lost track,” the soldier said truthfully.

  She started to respond, but again thought better of it and just shook her head. She put a fresh bandage over the wound, then peeled something that looked like adhesive-backed plastic off a roll she pulled from her medicine cabinet and placed it over the bandage.

  “You can shower first,” she told him. “If you want some privacy I’ll wait outside.”

  “I’m not shy,” Bolan said, removing his clothes and stepping into the shower. When he finished, she was waiting for him with a clean towel.

  “Do you want me to step out while you shower?” he asked her.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Ten minutes later, she called Bolan back inside. Fully clothed, they shared the one bed and curled up to get some sleep.

  “OH JEEZ!” Jim Buck moaned.

  “Shut your fucking mouth, Jim!” Gordon Gould ordered, but the sheriff kept muttering “Oh jeez! Oh jeez!” over and over as if the phrase was his new mantra. Gould was going to have to keep an eye on Buck. The carnage they’d discovered at the veterinarian clinic seemed to have unhinged the man. Gould pulled his nephew Jason into an examination room off the main lobby.

  “Watch Jim,” he told the younger Gould. “He looks about one fart away from losing his shit.”

  Liang joined the pair in the examination room. The Chinese seemed to share Gould’s doubts about the sheriff’s state of mind. “Are you absolutely certain you have Mr. Buck under control?” Liang asked.

  “One hundred percent,” Gould said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

  “I hope so, because the sheriff appears to be weeping. It’s making my men nervous.” Liang’s men had removed the body from the front of the building, as well as the two men who had been shot outside the bull’s pen out back. They’d also driven away the SUV, complete with its deceased driver. They had, however, left
the bodies of the two men killed by the bull, which they’d barely managed to herd back into its pen; it had been eating hay inside the barn area of the clinic when Liang’s men arrived. “Does the sheriff understand what he is to put in the report?”

  “I think I’m going to have to help him some with that,” Gould said.

  “And you know what to put in the report?” Liang asked.

  “I think so. Those two out back got fired from Ag Con today because they didn’t like foreigners and lesbians.”

  “Because they displayed hostility toward minorities and other protected groups and acted inappropriately,” Liang corrected. “Such behavior is not allowed per Ag Con’s employee handbook.”

  “Right,” Gould said, “because they were inappropriate. Anyway, they got fired and decided to take out their frustration by vandalizing the lesbians’ clinic, and ended up getting the shit stomped out of them by the clinic’s prize Angus bull.”

  “I suppose that will have to suffice. Are you certain you can convince Sheriff Buck to fill out the report as you described?”

  “That fat son of a bitch will fill it out any way I tell him,” Gould said.

  “If you have such omnipotent control over the man,” Liang said, “perhaps you could convince him to leave. His whimpering is making my men nervous and hampering our cleanup operation.”

  “Jason, take Sheriff Buck to my house. Stay with him until I show up, and make damned sure he doesn’t call anyone or fill out any incident reports until I get there.” Gould felt embarrassed for Buck. He found the man’s blubbering as annoying as any of the Ag Con men did, but he could see why Buck was upset. They had encountered one hell of a sight when they’d arrived at the animal hospital. The man in the SUV had had half his head blown off, and bloody chunks of bone and brain had sprayed the interior of the cab. Gould didn’t envy the poor bastards who’d had to drive that vehicle to wherever Ag Con dumped it. The guy out front looked like he’d been shot in the gut with a cannon. He appeared to have been trying to stuff his intestines back in his body cavity when he died. And those two out back who had been stomped by the bull—Gould had never seen anything like that.

  After Jason took the sheriff home, Gould watched the Ag Con crew deal with the mess. They seemed to have some experience cleaning up human guts and brains. Gould felt cold fear wash over him as he watched the passionless men work. What have I gotten myself into? he wondered, but it was too late to back out. Ag Con had paid him more for what had so far amounted to just a few hours of work than he would ever make from his cattle operations and his salary as president of the North Dakota Cattle Raisers’ Association combined—but he was starting to wonder if it had been worth it.

  He was used to doing business with slimeballs and sleazebags of every stripe. That was par for the course when dealing with the North Dakota state legislature. And he’d resorted to extreme measures to protect the association and in particular to protect his presidency. Gould was no Boy Scout. He’d killed men in Vietnam, and had arranged for a couple of obstinate ranchers who had gotten in his way to meet the same fate. But he was starting to worry that this time he had made a deal with the devil himself.

  Liang’s cell phone rang, and the man stepped outside to take the call. When he came back in, he walked over to the corner in which Gould was brooding.

  “Mr. Gould,” he said, “you are to go get Sheriff Buck and bring him to your office. Please make certain that he knows exactly what he is to say and write before he goes to the police station to prepare his report. And please, stick to the script that I have prepared for you.” Liang handed Gould some notes scrawled by hand on a yellow legal tablet. “You are to burn these papers after you have coached Sheriff Buck. No improvisation, please.”

  These people would say “please” and “thank you” when they killed you, Gould thought.

  “Go immediately, please,” Liang said.

  BOLAN WOKE UP to the sound of distant engines approaching. Kemp had fallen asleep curled up against him, and he had his arm across her waist. “Wake up,” he whispered. “We’ve got company.”

  Bolan had rolled out of bed and had boots on before she was even completely awake. The sound of engines was still off in the distance. Their drone carried for miles through the stillness of the night, but they were approaching fast.

  “You have a shirt I could wear?” he asked.

  “You might be in luck,” Kemp said, buttoning her jeans. “Try this.” She pulled a large flannel shirt from a steel bureau beside the bed. “I use this as a nightgown. It just might fit you.” It did.

  “What have you got for weapons?” Bolan asked.

  Kemp produced a key and opened a locked steel cabinet to reveal a variety of rifles and one handgun, a Ruger Super Blackhawk revolver chambered for .44 Magnum rounds. Bolan selected a Browning BAR deer rifle chambered for the .308 Winchester round, along with several loaded 4-round magazines that sat on a shelf inside the cabinet. “Extra ammo?” he asked.

  Kemp pulled four 20-round boxes of 165-grain Remington Core-Lokt rounds. She then selected a Savage bolt-action rifle that was chambered for the .30-06 Springfield round and put the Ruger in a Western-style holster she’d strapped around her waist.

  Kemp tossed the soldier the .308 ammo along with several boxes of Core-Lokt rounds in a camouflage backpack and a couple of 50-round boxes of Remington Desert Eagle .44 Magnum ammo. Again, it was nothing fancy compared to the custom-loaded ammunition Bolan was used to shooting, but effective nonetheless.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Is there a way out the back?”

  “There’s a vent window in the toilet area. I’ll fit through it. You might, too,” she said, looking at the soldier’s broad shoulders, “but just barely.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Bolan said. He squeezed through the window and was helping Kemp through when a rifle shot shattered the window that faced out the front of the cabin. The first shot was followed by a barrage of rifle fire. If they had been shooting at a wood-frame building, the bullets would have passed through the walls and turned the interior of the cabin into a killing box, but the .223 bullets from the attackers’ Chinese rifles just ricocheted off the stone walls.

  The sun was only just coming up so there still wasn’t much light, but Bolan’s well-trained eyes caught movement to his right. He let go of Kemp, who tumbled through the window to the ground, and brought his rifle to his shoulder. The Nikon Monarch UCC scope on his gun featured a special light-gathering coating and when he looked through its lens he could clearly see the figure of a man creeping through the sagebrush, trying to get around to the back of the cabin. Bolan centered the crosshairs of the scope on the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the rifle pushed the scope up, but when Bolan brought it back down, he saw the man sprawled out on the ground facedown, a crimson pool of blood spreading out around his torso.

  Kemp had regained her composure and grabbed her gun. “This way,” she said, and broke into a run. Bolan followed her as she ran to a path that led down a steep cliff to a dry creek bed.

  “We can circle around behind them and get to a better shooting position,” she said. “We have a blind set up for hunting deer that looks right down on the approach to the cabin.” The speed with which Kemp moved and her sure-footedness impressed Bolan.

  The pair ran up a switchback trail that ended on a small plateau atop a butte that overlooked the cabin. Bolan crawled to the edge of the cliff and surveyed the scene through the scope of his Browning rifle. At least two dozen men were firing at the front of the cabin and Bolan could hear shots coming from behind the structure. So far no one seemed to have realized that their quarry had escaped. Kemp had taken up a shooting position beside him and had her scope on a potential target.

  “What should we do?” she asked him. “There are at least twenty-five men down there. Should we take them on or should we get the hell out of here?”

  “Where would we go?” Bolan asked.

  “
That’s a bit of a problem,” Kemp replied. “The only way out of here is the way we came in. We’re in some seriously rugged country. When they realize we’re not inside the cabin, they’re going to be coming out on our heels. This is as good a position as we’re going to find to take them on.”

  “Then let’s do it.” Bolan said, squeezing the trigger, taking out one of the Build & Berg mercenaries. Kemp did the same, with the same result. The Executioner took out four more of the men below, and Kemp dropped another two before the mercenaries realized they were under attack from the rear. They dropped another three before the B&B men below were able to get enough of a fix on their position and start returning fire.

  When the bullets from below started getting too close for comfort, Kemp said, “Follow me.” She ran in a crouch toward a crevice in the side of the butte. She slid down the crevice on her rear until it ended about halfway down the side of the butte. She ran along a trail that led to a juniper tree with a metal deer stand resting against it.

  “You get up there—you’ll have good sight lines to the cabin.” It was a good hide for the soldier because the sun rising behind the butte would make it hard for the men to pinpoint his muzzle-flashes through the brush. With each passing minute Bolan became more impressed with Kemp.

  “I’ll go to the base of the butte and get the stragglers you miss,” the woman said. Bolan scrambled up the deer stand. When he looked through his scope, he saw the remaining B&B mercenaries creeping toward the butte. He counted eight men left standing. That left at least five unaccounted for, meaning they were probably circling around to attack them from behind. He set his crosshairs on the nearest man, who was within two hundred yards of the base of the butte, and squeezed the trigger. His scope rose toward the sky, but he acquired another target almost before the action of the rifle had finished cycling another round into the chamber and dropped another man. He sighted in on a third man, but before he could squeeze the trigger he heard a shot from below and the man fell to the ground with half his head missing.