Toxic Terrain

by Don Pendleton

  “Follow me!” he shouted and ran in a crouch along the cliff that opened up into the meadow.

  Once inside the canyon he looked through the night-vision scope on his rifle in an attempt to locate the position of the sharpshooters that Kolodziej had placed along the eastern edge of the canyon. He spotted one a bit more than a half a mile north of their position. The man lay prone, not moving, and was most likely dead. Perhaps three hundred yards north of the dead man he saw the second sniper. The man was upright, but didn’t appear to be moving. From this distance he couldn’t tell if the man was alive or not. He scanned the rest of the area, but was unable to detect the heat signatures of anything but the cattle grazing in the meadow.

  Liang and his troops ran as fast as they could with their gear and reached the first sharpshooter. As Liang had suspected, the man had been killed, but judging from the amount of fresh blood still pouring from the bullet wound, the man had only been dead ten or twenty minutes, at most, perhaps less. Again Liang scanned the meadow, and again the only heat signatures he picked up came off the cattle. From this position he could see that the second sharpshooter also appeared to be either dead or severely injured. If he was wounded, his injuries would be mortal if for no other reason than the fact that Liang wasn’t going to expend the resources to tend to them.

  After scanning the field once again, he saw what he thought could be the only possible hiding place for Cooper and Kemp—the ravine where Kolodziej had first spotted them. Liang and his men ran to the entrance of the ravine, stopping several times along the way to scan for their quarry, in case they were somewhere that he hadn’t been able to see from his previous position.

  On one of those stops he thought he might have picked up a heat signature that didn’t belong to a cow, but upon closer study it appeared as though the heat was generated from a rather large pile of fresh manure and Liang and his men continued moving toward the entrance of the ravine.

  When they approached the ravine, Liang scanned its interior with his night-vision scope. He was able to make out the faint and rapidly fading heat signatures of many, many bodies, but saw no sign of anyone still alive. The men cautiously approached the entrance, watching for any sign of ambush, but all they encountered was carnage. Kolodziej had died within yards of the entrance to the ravine. The bodies of Kolodziej’s mercenaries were intermingled with the bodies of Liang’s own commandos, and in the center of the chaotic scene lay the wreckage of the helicopter.

  Liang’s men spread out and searched the scene, looking for signs of Cooper or Kemp, but found only the remains of their own men. Not one remained alive. The scene looked very much like hell might. It seemed impossible that one man and one woman could have been responsible for this much destruction. It looked more like his men had awakened some sort of demonic presence.

  Once he was satisfied that Cooper and Kemp weren’t in the ravine, Liang ordered his men back into the meadow and began looking for other possible hiding locations. He contemplated the possibility of their heading north into the heart of the Badlands, but if that was the case, the pair wouldn’t emerge until after Chen had carried out his plans—if they emerged at all. It would take several days for even a supersoldier like Cooper to make it through that terrain.

  Liang was scanning the meadow one last time when he heard the shots from the south.

  KEMP HADN’T BEEN enthusiastic about Bolan’s plan for the two of them to cover themselves in mud and manure to obscure their heat signatures, but instead of arguing with her, he began covering himself with a foul mixture of the two substances, caking it on as thickly as possible. When Kemp saw Bolan was serious, she too began covering herself with mud and manure. There was no shortage of either substance in the creek bed.

  The plan seemed to have worked. As the Ag Con goons made their way north toward the snipers’ locations, Cooper and Kemp crawled south along the creek bed. Cooper knew that this cheap trick wouldn’t fool potent night-vision optics like the FLIR that he’d left back at Kemp’s veterinarian clinic, but the ATN was a combat optic, designed to provide a certain amount of night-vision capabilities while at the same time providing a wide field of vision with a clear view of the surrounding area and the ability to acquire targets quickly. It was an excellent combat scope, but its ability to spot heat signatures was minimal, making it possible to disguise a heat signature with some sort of protective covering. Such as manure and mud.

  At one point Bolan feared that they hadn’t disguised themselves well enough to fool the ATN optics. He chanced a look back through his own ATN scope and saw that the men had stopped and one appeared to be looking directly at them through his rifle optics. Bolan signaled Kemp to remain still until the man finally stopped looking their way and continued on toward the wooded draw.

  By the time the men entered the valley, Bolan and Kemp were within three hundred yards of the narrow opening into the canyon. The soldier scanned the area beyond the entrance and saw two men posted on the west side of the trail. He was willing to bet money that at least two more men were located on the east side, too. He motioned for Kemp to come up beside him.

  “I want you to crawl to the rocks near the east side of the canyon entrance,” he told her. “There are two men on the west side of the trail. I want you to remain prone, but target one of the men. I’m going to the west side of the opening. My guess is that there are at least two more men out there. Wait until you hear my shot, then shoot the man in your sights and try to take out the second as fast as possible.”

  Kemp didn’t say a word and just crawled into position. By the time she got there, Bolan had already assumed his spot. She’d barely gotten her crosshairs centered on the first of her targets when she heard Bolan shoot. He’d switched his weapon to full-auto and was spraying his side of the road, but Kemp kept her rifle on the single-round setting. It had been a long time since she’d fired a rifle set on full-auto, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it. She squeezed the trigger of her gun and her target went down. She heard Bolan continue to spray autofire at his targets while she pumped a single round into her second target. He too dropped, but she saw that the first man had sat back up and was returning fire on her position. She put the crosshairs on his chest, but her third shot went a little high. Even so, it was effective. She saw the top of the man’s head fly backward, but he remained seated, and even managed to squeeze off another shot, though it was unaimed and went wild. She’d already fired a third round into the man before she realized he was either dead or close to it.

  A few days earlier she would never have thought that she’d ever be able take a human life. Now she was doing it as if it was a hobby, like knitting a sweater or playing golf. It was too much to process.

  Bolan’s shouts broke her from her thoughts. “Move!” he shouted. “Now!”

  Kemp ran as fast as her legs could carry her, which was amazingly fast. She may have been tiny but she was strong, fit, and she kept up with Bolan’s explosive pace fairly well.

  Kemp ran hard until the trail widened and she saw two parked SUVs. They were black Chevrolet Tahoes, the kind that Ag Con employees drove. Bolan was already hot-wiring the closer of the two by the time Kemp arrived, and had it revving before the woman finished scrambling into the cab. Just as he slammed the vehicle into Reverse and stomped on the accelerator, a stream of bullets crashed through the windshield. Bolan threw himself down onto the seat, pulling Kemp down with him, all the while holding the accelerator to the floor. He cranked the wheel, and the truck whipped around so that the front end was facing away from the approaching shooters. He slammed the gearshift lever into Drive, and once again floored the accelerator as bullets burst through the rear window of the vehicle.

  “Buckle your seat belt,” Bolan told Kemp. “This is going to be one hell of a ride.”

  CHEN LOOKED at the sat phone and shook his head. Liang had been a good captain, perhaps the best with which he had ever worked, but when he failed to answer his phone, Chen could only assume one of two things.
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  The first, of course, was that Liang was dead. Given the body count that Cooper had racked up in the past several days, Chen realized that it was a distinct possibility. But there was also another possibility: that Liang’s pride in his work had turned to hubris and the man had chosen to willfully disobey Chen rather than concede defeat.

  Either reality meant that the Cooper situation had yet to be settled. It also most likely meant that Liang’s men had lost the helicopter. Chen couldn’t imagine how a single man—and of course his veterinarian sidekick—could hold out against at least twenty highly trained soldiers who had the advantage of air support, but that appeared to be what had happened.

  Chen tried once again to reach Liang, and once again Liang failed to answer his sat phone. He was going to have to arrange some other form of transit to the Iowa facility. There was no room aboard the helicopter hauling the product, which would already be overloaded with just the containers of product and the pilot. Plus it would be dangerous—Chen did not want to be breathing air in which the prions were stored, even if they were kept in sealed casks. In the course of their research they had lost six technicians because of exposure to the product, and that was after taking every conceivable precaution.

  Now he regretted not renewing the lease on Ag Con’s corporate jet. He had made the decision to let the jet go after the U.S. auto industry meltdown had turned private jets into symbols of corporate greed. For Ag Con to fulfill its mission, Chen and his partners had needed to keep as low a profile as possible. Anything that might draw unwanted attention to the corporation would have been counterproductive.

  Commercial travel was also out of the question. Chen didn’t know who Cooper worked for, but the man had to have connections with a security organization of some sort. Chen had no idea how encompassing was the reach of this organization, but he could not take the chance that he had been put on some sort of terrorist watch list. Commercial air travel was not an option—he would definitely have to make other arrangements.

  Chen knew one person who had a private plane that was easily capable of transporting him quickly and safely to the Ag Con facilities in Iowa. He once again reached for his sat phone and dialed a number. When he heard the voice on the other end, he said, “Mr. Gould, are you making progress dealing with the remains of the sheriff?” From the hysterical, incoherent response, Chen gathered that Gould still had not solved his problem. “Is your cousin the drug peddler helping you?” He was. “I think I can free up the resources to solve your dilemma, but in return I will need your cousin to perform a service for me.”

  7

  When Liang heard the shots coming from the entrance to the canyon, he knew that Cooper and Kemp had somehow slipped past his men as they’d made their way to the ravine. The group ran back toward the squad Liang had left at the south end of the canyon. When they reached the squad, all four men appeared to be dead, but Liang didn’t stop to check; he kept running after Cooper and Kemp. When he and his men approached the area where they’d been forced to abandon their vehicles, Liang saw one of the SUVs starting to drive away.

  Liang raised his rifle and fired a full-auto blast at the fleeing vehicle. He saw the windshield shatter beneath the spray of bullets, but the vehicle kept going backward at a high rate of speed. The driver cranked the wheel and the vehicle changed directions in a swirl of dust. Liang fired into the dust cloud, and when the vehicle emerged from the other side, he saw that he had taken out the rear window as well as the front.

  He and his men ran for the remaining SUV, but when they got there, they realized that the key for the vehicle resided with one of the dead men at the mouth of the canyon. Liang sent one of his gunners to retrieve it. The man returned in a very short time, but to Liang the wait seemed eternal. Killing Cooper and Kemp had become his obsession, and it had caused him to lose all sense of proportion.

  When the man returned with the key, Liang started the vehicle and drove down the rough trail at such a high speed that he risked breaking the suspension components of the vehicle. Even though they all wore seat belts, the men inside the cab were tossed about so hard that the three without the good fortune of having a steering wheel for a handhold hit their heads against the windows with almost concussive force.

  The trail wound down through a valley and back up some hills on the other side. The trail of dust that Cooper’s vehicle kicked up hung over the valley like a fog. Cooper had turned off the headlights of his vehicle, but even though it was a moonless night, the stars shone so brightly that there was enough light for navigation. Cooper had no way of turning off his brake lights, and Liang saw them light up as the vehicle crested the hills ahead of them.

  Liang estimated that it was approximately one mile to the point where he’d seen the brake lights come on. The trail connected with the oil-field road just over the crest of the hill ahead. The brake lights indicated that Cooper had just turned onto the oil-field road at the spot where Liang had crashed through the gate earlier.

  Liang was traveling at seventy miles per hour. That meant that he was only a minute or two behind Cooper. He pushed the accelerator closer to the floorboards and increased his speed to eighty miles per hour, hoping the vehicle would withstand such punishment.

  When Liang reached the crest of the hill, the turn onto the oil-field road took him by surprise. He had underestimated his speed, and when he cranked the wheel the truck slid broadside across the road and down in the shallow ditch that ran alongside the road. The SUV continued through a fence that bordered the ditch. Liang cranked the wheel of the vehicle back toward the road and stabbed the accelerator to the floor. He aimed for a spot between two fence poles and punched his way through the fence and up the bank.

  Once on the road he increased the speed to 105 mph, which seemed to be the lumbering truck’s top speed. At that rate he could barely keep the vehicle on the narrow road. His task was made more difficult by the trail of dust hanging over the road, reducing visibility to nearly zero.

  At least the dust cloud told him he was on the right track. When Liang burst through the cloud into clean air, he knew he’d lost his quarry. He slammed on the brakes, nearly sliding back off the road as he came to a stop. His wheels dug so deeply into the loose scoria that had been used for paving that the SUV was initially stuck, and he had to switch the vehicle into four-wheel-drive before he was able to extricate himself and turn around.

  Liang slowly retraced his route, trying to determine where he’d lost Cooper. He almost missed the tracks of Cooper’s vehicle going off the road not far beyond the spot where the dust cloud ended. He followed the trail and saw that Cooper had driven off the road and doubled back. The tracks eventually turned onto a trail that led to some grazing land near the Little Missouri River.

  Liang drove slowly down the trail. It was even rougher than the one they had first been on, but that wasn’t the reason for his caution—he didn’t want to miss any signs that might show where Cooper had turned off the main trail.

  BOLAN KNEW he had problems with his vehicle before he even reached the oil-field road. The heat gauge rose beyond normal operating temperature and continued to move upward toward the red zone. The Ag Con thugs had either put a bullet through his radiator or whatever had caved in the grille had done more than cosmetic damage. Either way, the vehicle wasn’t going to get them very far before its engine failed.

  Kemp realized there was a problem when steam started to rise from under the hood. “Any suggestions?” she asked.

  “Do you know any side trails around here?”

  “Yeah, there’s a trail that leads to some grazing lands along the river. One of our clients runs his cattle down there.”

  “Where’s the turn? Point it out to me. I’m going to double back to it. That way our dust cloud will make it harder for them to see where we turned off.”

  “It’s coming up on our right,” Kemp said. “It’s…here.”

  Bolan drove about a quarter of a mile past the turnoff, then jammed on the parking br
ake, sliding into a 180-degree turn. When he was facing the opposite direction, he released the brake and stabbed the accelerator to the floor, driving down the narrow path straight back into his dust cloud. When he was roughly halfway back to the turnoff, he veered off the road, crossed the shallow ditch and drove in the grass parallel to the road. Just before he reached his turnoff, he saw the other Ag Con SUV pass by on the road at what had to have been close to top speed for the vehicle. He caught only a glimpse of the driver, but it looked a lot like the man who had shot him at the Ag Con compound. Even though Bolan had seen the men in the SUV, he doubted that the Ag Con mercenaries had seen him through the thick dust cloud, but he also knew it wouldn’t be long before they realized he’d doubled back.

  Bolan cranked the wheel, turning onto the trail Kemp had pointed out, and floored the accelerator, but the over-heating engine didn’t respond very well. He could tell the engine was about to blow.

  “Past this next hill on your right there’s a valley that runs down to the river. Since it’s not an actual marked trail, you’re not supposed to drive there, but we have more important things to worry about than getting a ticket from a ranger. Pam and I rode our horses down it when we were hunting elk last fall. It’s passable.”

  When Bolan reached the base of the hill, he cranked the wheel to the right and careened around in a four-wheeled drift and gunned what was left of the engine, which was starting to knock loudly. He followed the small valley through a stand of juniper trees. When he reached the lowland along the Little Missouri River, the engine let out a huge bang and the cab filled with blue oil smoke.

  “What now?” Kemp asked.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Bolan said. “But whatever we do, we have to get away from here.”

  “We’re just across the river from our client’s ranch,” Kemp said. “He’s old-school—he uses horses, not ATVs. He’s got some good riding horses. If we can get to his barn, we can saddle up a couple of horses and ride out.”