Toxic Terrain

by Don Pendleton

  “How deep’s the river here?” Bolan asked.

  “Not deep. It’s too shallow for swimming.”

  “Then lets run through the water for as far as we can,” Bolan said. “That will make it harder for them to follow us.” They were already in the water and heading upstream before Bolan finished the sentence. He let Kemp lead the way.

  “Is your friend going to be upset when we come walking into his ranch in the middle of the night and take his horses?” Bolan asked.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend, but he’s friendly. His name is Harry Kadrmas. He’s a retired college professor. He has a doctorate in forage physiology. I guess that means he’s a grass doctor. I only know him professionally, but he seemed cool.”

  “Is he going to shoot us?”

  Kemp thought about the question. “He just might,” she said. “He’s cool, but he’s independent-minded and I don’t think he’ll take kindly to someone messing with his horses in the middle of the night. But I’m sure if we talk to him he’ll let us take the horses.”

  Bolan considered the possibility. “That’s one option, I suppose, but I’m afraid bringing him into this will put him in danger. The less he knows, the safer he is.”

  “Then we’re going to have to be pretty quiet,” Kemp said. “His dog knows me, so that should help.”

  They’d gone nearly a mile by Bolan’s estimate when Kemp left the water and climbed the west bank. “Harry’s place is just on the other side of these hills,” she said, and began climbing up the side of a rock formation. She’d made it to the top and Bolan was about to follow her when he caught sight of a pair of flashlights moving in their direction, one on either side of the river.

  Kemp saw it, too. She looked at Bolan for guidance. He motioned for her to get down, so she took cover behind some rocks. The last thing she saw before ducking down was Bolan slinging his gun and pulling a huge knife from a sheath in his boot.

  DAN GOULD WALKED into his cousin’s family room and almost threw up. When he eventually regained his composure, he said, “Gordie, what on God’s good green earth have you gotten yourself into here?”

  “Cousin, I wish I could tell you,” Gordon Gould said, “but I’d be lying if I said I knew myself. All I know is that I’ve got one hell of a mess on my hands.”

  “Now you got that mess on my hands, too. I don’t know what the fuck you’re into, but if it’s murder, and it sure as hell looks like somebody got murdered, maybe both of these stupid fucks, then you’ve just made me an accessory if I don’t turn you in.”

  “Aw, you ain’t going to do that, cousin,” Gould said. “You don’t want the cops looking into my business any more than you want them looking into your business, and you know, cousin, your business is my business.”

  “You threatening me, Gordie?” Dan asked.

  “Just stating a plain fact, cousin.”

  “Okay, you know I ain’t going to turn you in. But just why in the hell would you expect me to help you clean up this mess?”

  “Because if you do, I’ll give you $100,000 cash money.”

  Dan didn’t need to think about the offer. “So what do we need to do?”

  “Near as I can figure,” Gould said, “we need to dump these bodies and clean up this room.” Dan looked around the room, started to wretch once again, and this time actually did throw up. “Now damn it, cousin, we ain’t never going to get this place cleaned up if you keep puking on the floor.”

  When Dan regained control of his gag reflex, he asked, “Where do we start?”

  “First off, we need to get rid of these carcasses. Let’s wrap them in a tarp and throw them in the back of Jason’s pickup.”

  “Where’s the sheriff’s squad car?”

  “Back at the station,” Gould said. “He rode here with Jason.”

  The men went out to Gould’s barn and returned carrying a rubber-coated canvas tarp that Gould used for covering his truck box when he hauled loads of ground feed for his horses.

  “Now how we going to do this?” Dan asked. “We can’t carry both of them in this tarp. Jim’s too damned fat.”

  “Let’s lay the tarp in the back of Jason’s pickup, then carry both of them out there. That way we won’t get no blood in the box.”

  “What the hell difference does that make?” Dan asked.

  “We won’t leave any DNA evidence that way, you damned fool,” Gould replied. “That way they won’t be able to send any of those forensic teams like on TV after us. Plus you can take the pickup to auction and sell it.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” Dan asked.

  “Hell, yes. Ain’t nobody going to be missing Jason except me, and I sure as hell ain’t going to send anyone looking for him. Besides, Jason sure as hell ain’t going to need a pickup any longer.” Dan had to admit that the plan made sense. Like everyone else in the region, the Gould boys hadn’t been raised to be wasteful.

  “We’ll dump the bodies,” Gould said, “then you can take the pickup to Minneapolis and get rid of it at auction. It ought to bring at least twelve grand.”

  “Can I keep that, too?” Dan asked.

  “Don’t get greedy, cousin. Tell you what—you help me clean up this mess and I’ll split it with you fifty-fifty.”

  They spread the tarp in the box of the pickup and went in to get the bodies. Gould grabbed the sheriff by the arms, which were slippery with blood and brain matter, and Dan grabbed the feet. “Oh, my Christ!” he said when they picked up the big man’s body. “He shit himself.”

  “I think they both did,” Gould said, “or Jason pissed his pants, at least. Happens a lot.”

  “You spend a lot of time in close quarters with dead bodies?” Dan asked.

  “I did in Vietnam,” Gould said, and Dan shut up. Vietnam was a sore subject between the two of them, because Dan had got out of going because he’d drawn a high draft number. Gould suspected that Dan’s old man, Phillip, had greased a few palms to get his cousin that number.

  They carried the soiled, bloody bodies to the truck and placed them in the tarp. “Should we wrap them up?” Dan asked.

  “No. Let’s clean up the house first. Then we can throw the rags in with the bodies and bury them all together.”

  Gould dug out some cleaning supplies and the two men tried to scrub the blood, brains, urine and feces from the carpet and walls, but the job was so disgusting that Dan once again vomited. That was too much for Gould. He could take the rest of it, but the bourbon he’d been drinking wasn’t settling well in his stomach, and for some reason the sight of Dan throwing up was more than he could handle. Moments after Dan first lost the contents of his stomach both Gould men were vomiting on the floor.

  When they finally overcame their nausea, they had a bigger mess than ever to clean up. Dan looked at the mess and started weeping. That was the last straw for Gould. It was bad enough that he had to watch Dan puking on his floor, but the sight of him crying was more than he could take. He’d maybe seen two grown men cry in the forty years since he got back from Vietnam, tops, and now he’d had to endure the sight twice in the same day.

  He pulled Dan up off his knees and slapped his face. Gould wasn’t a big man, but he was wiry, strong and fast. Dan was big, but was soft and slow. He took a swing at Gould, but his cousin just grabbed his fist with one hand. He cocked the other and when it connected with Dan’s jaw, all the man saw was blackness mixed with flashes of light. He dropped to the floor, unconscious.

  “Get up and start cleaning this mess up!” Gould shouted, but his cousin was beyond hearing him. Gould was still shouting when his phone rang. It was Chen.

  LIANG FOLLOWED the trail until it ended in a large pasture in the valley along the Little Missouri River. He circled the entire meadow, but the area was a boxed canyon, bordered by the river on one side and steep cliffs on the others. The only ways in or out were the trail that they’d just come down or crossing the river.

  The river was shallow and had many low-water crossin
gs where roads ran right through it, but unless there was a marked crossing, it was too risky to try to drive through unless a vehicle was equipped with water-crossing snorkels for the air intake system—and none of the Ag Con vehicles were.

  That meant that Cooper and Kemp had turned off the main trail somewhere and Liang had missed their tracks. He doubled back, fighting the urge to drive quickly because he didn’t want to miss signs of Cooper’s trail a second time.

  When they were roughly halfway back to the oil-field road, Liang spotted what he was looking for—fresh tracks in the grass leading off the trail into a valley. He followed the tracks down to the river, where he found Cooper’s vehicle, steam and blue oil smoke still rising from the engine.

  “Spread out and find them!” Liang ordered. “One of you cross the water and cover both banks. I’ll do the same.” Liang crossed the river. He and one of his men followed it to the north, and the other two men went south.

  Liang scoured the far bank while the other man scouted the near bank. They slowly made their way north, looking for any sign of Cooper and Kemp. The second pair did the same in the opposite direction. After the southbound pair had walked about a mile, the man on the west bank stopped to urinate. His partner saw what he was doing and just shook his head. Proper etiquette for males around the world was to look away from a man who was urinating outdoors. That was as true for members of the PLA as it was for soldiers in any other military organization, and the man’s partner dutifully looked away while he tended to his bodily functions.

  As he urinated, the man marveled at the strange topography of the region. They had stopped beside a group of rock formations of a type the man had never encountered anywhere besides this peculiar place. Smooth, rounded rocks rose perhaps fifteen feet from the riverbank like the shoulders of an elephant.

  The man looked more closely at the rocks and saw footprints leading from the river toward the rocks. He was about to alert his partner when a hand covered his mouth. He felt cold steel pierce the skin of his neck and the knife blade sink into his flesh. When the blade sliced through his spinal cord, he no longer felt anything.

  After what he believed to be a decent amount of time, the man’s partner finally chanced a look to see if the guy was done urinating. But his partner appeared to have disappeared without a trace. He called the man’s name but only heard silence in return.

  The PLA soldier waded across the river, which was waist-deep in places, and emerged at the spot where his comrade had stopped to urinate—but he saw no sign of his comrade.

  Upon closer inspection he saw a spray of thicker fluid that hadn’t soaked into the ground as the urine had—it was blood. The soldier followed the splashes of blood to the edge of the peculiar rock formation and saw a boot sticking out from behind a rock. It was the type of work boot that he and his comrades wore as part of their Ag Con uniforms. The man raised his gun and slowly moved toward the boot. When he got closer, he saw a pair of legs behind the rocks.

  The man had heard nothing, and wasn’t certain if his partner had hurt himself or if he’d been attacked, so he prepared for the latter. But he wasn’t prepared for the large man who sprang up from behind the rock, driving a long knife blade up under his chin. The blade penetrated the flesh, drove through the bone that formed his brain pan and finally lodged deep within his brain stem. The man fell dead before he even realized he’d been attacked.

  BOLAN WIPED OFF the seven-inch blade of his fighting knife on the dead man’s shirt, folded the blade and returned it to his boot sheath. He relieved the bodies of a couple of full magazines for the QBZ, along with a drop pouch for each leg in which to carry them, then he tossed both bodies in the water and kicked dirt over the blood clotting in the dusty clay. He took a juniper branch and brushed away his tracks as best he could before climbingup to where Kemp hid in the rocks above. The subterfuge wouldn’t fool an experienced tracker, but it should be enough to keep most of the Ag Con goons from finding them in the dark. And Bolan was certain that there would be more coming after them.

  Kemp led the way to the Kadrmas ranch, with Bolan keeping an eye out behind them, watching for any more Ag Con men. Harry’s dog barked, but it did seem to know Kemp and she was able to calm the animal before it made too much noise.

  The horse barn wasn’t locked, but then few people in the area ever locked doors. Everyone knew everyone else, so there wasn’t much point to locking doors. Kemp took some saddles, bridles and other tack that hung from the walls of the barn and began saddling a mare. Bolan started to do the same thing with a gelding, but Kemp said, “Don’t take that horse. He’s useless. Harry only keeps him around because he feels sorry for him. Take that one.” Kemp pointed to a stallion in the next stall.

  “A stallion?”

  “He’s a bit spirited, but he’s well-broke—more or less. Harry rides him all the time. You’re a big boy. You can handle him.” Bolan did as instructed. The horse seemed calm enough.

  They’d just finished securing their gear and were ready to lead the horses out of the barn when the door burst open. Before they could react, Bolan and Kemp found themselves staring down both barrels of a Remington side-by-side double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun. It was so old that it still featured two exposed hammers.

  “Who’s in here?” Harry Kadrmas asked.

  “It’s me, Kristen Kemp. This is my friend Matt Cooper.”

  The old man lowered the shotgun and said, “Do you mind telling me what in God’s name you’re doing saddling up my horses in the middle of the goddamned night?”

  “Harry, they’ve got Pam. And Roger Grevoy.”

  “Who’s got Pam and Rog? You’re not making any sense, Kristen.”

  “Ag Con. They’ve kidnapped Rog and Pam. They’re holding them prisoner at that place they bought in the Killdeer Mountains.”

  “Kristen, I know those Ag Con people are some crooked sons of bitches, but kidnapping? You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious, Harry.” She told him an abbreviated version of the entire story, including what she knew about the signs of prion disease that Grevoy had found, ending with their narrow escape from the Ag Con men.

  “If what you’re saying is true, I’m going with you,” Harry said.

  Bolan spoke for the first time. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you could take Ms. Kemp and drive the both of you to town. Going into the Ag Con facility is going to be a borderline suicide mission. I barely made it out alive the last time I tried it. I might not be as lucky this time.”

  “There’s no way you’re getting rid of me,” Kemp said. “Haven’t I been useful so far?”

  “You have. But the situation is going to heat up. I’m taking this war to a whole new level. I’ll have a better chance if I go in alone.”

  “Kiss my ass,” she replied. “I’m going with you.”

  “Me, too,” Kadrmas said. “I didn’t get this from shrinking from battle in Vietnam.” He pointed to his leg, and for the first time Bolan realized that it was a prosthetic.

  “Look,” Bolan said, “I know how you feel, and I appreciate what you both have to offer, but the reality is that in an insertion operation like the one I’m planning, the two of you will just slow me down. I need to work alone on this.” He looked at Kemp. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. It will mean a lot to me to know you’re safe.”

  “Do you even know how to get where you’re going?” Kadrmas asked.

  “I have a good idea.”

  “It’s about a twenty-mile drive from here to Ag Con’s Killdeer Mountain facility, but that’s only because you have to drive back out to the highway, then drive all the way around to the east side of the mountains to get to Gap Road. That’s a long haul on horseback.”

  “Do you have a vehicle I can use?” Bolan asked.

  “I have something better—a good idea.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s a twenty-mile drive, but it’s no more than sev
en miles, as the crow flies,” Kadrmas said.

  “You mean along the river? You’d have to be a crow to cover that route.”

  “A crow or a good strong horse,” Kadrmas said, patting the stallion on the rump. “Jake here has carried me over the trails that run along the river many times. Do you have a GPS with a topo map?”

  Bolan took out his GPS unit and brought up the topographic map of the area. “Look here,” the older man said. “See this valley? Stick to the bottom of that and it will take you within a mile of the north end of the Ag Con property line. It’s tough sledding that last couple of miles into the ranch, but Jake will get you almost all the way there, and he’ll get you there by sunrise.”

  “Are there any tricky parts of the trail I should know about?” Bolan asked.

  “There’s one spot where a branch of the trail goes right, up into the mountains, and the other branch crosses the river.”

  “Which one should I take,” Bolan asked, and Kadrmas told him which fork to take.

  “What’ll we do?” Kemp asked when Kadrmas had finished explaining the trail to Bolan.

  “Go to Medora,” Bolan said. “That’s a tourist town. The Ag Con men won’t look for you there. They’d attract too much attention. Get a room at the Rough Rider Motel. That’s a small mom-and-pop operation. No one will be able to get in there without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. I’ll contact you when all this is over and let you know when it’s safe to leave.”

  Kemp walked over to him. “Promise?” she asked.

  “Promise,” Bolan said.

  8

  After Chen’s phone call, Gordon Gould tried to awaken his unconscious cousin. “Damn it, Dan, wake up,” he said, shaking the larger man. He tried slapping the man, shaking him, even dumping water on his face. Finally he kicked Dan in the testicles. It wasn’t a hard, direct kick; it was more of a graze, but it did the trick. Dan let out a bloodcurdling shriek and jerked up, clutching his groin.