Toxic Terrain

by Don Pendleton

  “One last question,” Bolan said.

  “Yes?”

  “What am I supposed to do with you?”

  “I’m a dead man,” Zoeng said. “I have been infected with the prions. Please, I have given you all the information I have. In return, I ask only one favor.”

  “What?” Bolan asked.

  “Shoot me.”

  “I can’t do that,” Bolan said.

  With a loud cry Zoeng charged at Bolan, holding out some sort of syringe aimed straight at the soldier’s chest.

  The Executioner raised his Beretta and granted Zoeng’s final wish. He looked around at the other technicians. Each man possessed the knowledge to unleash the deaths of millions of people. Bolan wasn’t in the business of slaughtering unarmed opponents, but he wasn’t in the business of taking prisoners, either. “Do any more of you require my services?” he asked.

  BOLAN DROVE the black SUV as fast as he could and still keep it on the road. He’d wasted valuable minutes locking the technicians in the cells below the lab. As soon as he got off the loose, sandy gravel road and turned onto the main highway, the soldier pulled out his sat phone and called the Farm.

  “What’s happening, Striker?” Kurtzman asked.

  “I need you to track a helicopter that left the Ag Con facility within the past hour,” Bolan replied.

  “You want us to shoot it down?”

  “Not a good idea,” Bolan replied. “It’s loaded with what amounts to prions in concentrated powder form. Shoot the helicopter down, and anyone downwind of the crash site will be dead within weeks. Just find it and let me know where it is. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” Kurtzman said. “What about the facility?”

  “Sanitize it,” Bolan said, “with extreme prejudice.”

  “Did you leave any survivors?”

  “A few lab techs locked up in the lowest level of the barn. You’ll want to bring them in for interrogation. I suspect that there’s much we can learn from them.”

  “After that?” Kurtzman asked.

  “Burn the place to the ground. Same goes for the Trotters facility.”

  While he’d been talking to Kurtzman, Bolan had kept the throttle on the big V-8 engine pinned. Normally the trip would have taken half an hour, at least, but Bolan made it to the airport in less than twenty minutes. Calling Weydahl Field an airport would have been an exercise in flattery; the entire facility consisted of a long, narrow concrete runway with a small metal shed on the south end that served as a hangar. The only vehicle present was an Ag Con truck, twin to the one that Bolan drove.

  A twin-engine Beechcraft that matched the description that Kurtzman had given him of Gould’s plane was just touching down on the runway when Bolan neared the airport. Bolan kept the accelerator pinned to the floor until he was almost about alongside the steel building and then stabbed the emergency brake pedal just as the Beechcraft taxied up to the building. The rear wheels of the large SUV locked and the vehicle spun so that it was facing the opposite direction by the time it came to a halt. Bolan couldn’t see any people inside the other SUV because of the dark tinted windows, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He grabbed the RPG he’d liberated from the barn, maneuvered it out the driver’s window and fired a round into the Ag Con vehicle.

  Once the truck erupted in flames, lighting up the interior, Bolan could see a man sitting in the driver’s seat, trying desperately to escape. He opened the door and burst out, but he was already enveloped in flames. The man threw himself on the ground and rolled around, trying to extinguish the fire, but soon quit moving.

  Suddenly gunfire erupted from inside the building. The shots coming through a walk-in door set in the side of the building struck the front of Bolan’s vehicle, smashing out the glass lenses of the headlights. The building was just a pole-type shed, constructed of thin corrugated steel tacked to a framework made of wooden poles. The soldier’s vehicle didn’t offer him the best protection, but it was better than the protection afforded the men inside the shed. He estimated the location of the shooters from the angle through which the shots came out of the building, grabbed the QBZ rifle sitting beside him on the seat, and emptied a 30-round magazine into the walls. His rounds stitched holes through the corrugated steel at waist level. When no return fire came back from the building, Bolan loaded another grenade into the RPG launcher and fired into the structure. The grenade detonated on impact and created a ten-foot hole.

  Bolan could see two bodies lying in the twisted metal wreckage, both wearing the tattered remains of the de facto Ag Con uniform—khaki trousers and blue denim button-down shirts. He spotted nothing moving in the interior of the building. He’d almost decided that the area had been cleared of bad guys when someone opened up with automatic rifle fire.

  The man shooting at Bolan was on the far side of the building. Though he didn’t have a clear shot at the soldier through the hole left by the RPG round, some of his shots were coming dangerously close, hitting the front fender of the SUV. Bolan slammed the accelerator to the floorboards, drove down through the ditch and up the other side, catching air. He crashed through a fence before his wheels once again touched down and almost lost control, but managed to keep the vehicle pointed more or less at the hangar. While he drove, he pulled his Beretta from its holster and fired into the building. He skidded to a stop just outside the large overhead door that opened into the interior of the hangar. The man remaining inside the building continued to fire at him, but now Bolan could see why his aim was off—half the man’s face had been blown away by shrapnel from the RPG. Bolan recognized the half of the face that remained from images that Kurtzman had sent him—it was Chen. Bolan finished off the man with a 3-round burst that obliterated most of what remained of his face.

  While Bolan was doing this, the plane had reversed direction and was taxiing back to the runway. The soldier slammed the Tahoe into gear and accelerated toward the airplane. He passed it on the dirt alongside the runway, cranked the wheel and skid sideways to a stop, right in front of the aircraft.

  The plane skidded to a stop. A man Bolan hadn’t seen before jumped out the side door onto the wing and aimed a 1911-style pistol at him. The man was behind the large propeller of the twin-engine plane; the rotation of the propeller and vibration on the wing threw off his aim and his shots went high.

  Bolan found himself under no such constraints. He raised his Beretta and put a 3-round burst into the man’s shoulder, which was the only part of his body exposed behind the spinning propeller. The man tumbled backward and fell off the wing, but he still held on to the pistol. He rolled into a prone position and fired at Bolan, hitting the door frame just inches from the soldier’s head. Bolan switched his Beretta to full-auto and unloaded the rest of the magazine into the man, stitching him from the back of his head down his spine. Bolan dropped the empty Beretta and pulled out his Desert Eagle, putting the pilot square in his sights. He intended to fire at him, but the man appeared to be unarmed. The soldier jumped from his vehicle, ran to the plane and shouted, “Get out!”

  The man throttled down the plane and exited the cockpit. When he came out, Bolan could see that he’d voided his bladder. “Don’t hurt me!” the man screamed.

  Bolan frisked the man and found that he was unarmed. “Are you Dan Gould?” Bolan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You and I are going to identify some bodies back in the hangar,” Bolan said. “Then we’re going for a ride in your airplane.”

  AS SOON AS Bolan and Dan Gould were airborne, the soldier contacted Stony Man Farm to learn the location of the helicopter carrying the prion-infected material. They were too late to catch the helicopter at its refueling at the Mandan Airport, but Dan’s plane was much faster than the converted Huey and they were able to get to the Sioux Falls Regional Airport before the helicopter.

  When they landed, Bolan made Dan sit in the rearmost seat and secured his hands to the brackets attaching the seat to the floor
of the cabin with plastic zip ties. At first Dan had appeared to have been in a state of shock and Bolan worried about his ability to fly the plane, but once they were airborne Bolan realized the man was simply in a state of near-paralysis from fear. That fear made Dan easy to manipulate, and Bolan doubted he would try to make a break for it. But until the helicopter and its toxic contents were neutralized, the stakes were too high for the soldier to leave anything to chance.

  Bolan looked his terrified pilot straight in the eye and asked, “Do you have any doubt that I will kill you if you cause me the slightest bit of trouble?”

  Dan looked like he was trying to answer, but all that came out of his mouth was a loud sob, so he answered Bolan’s question by shaking his head.

  “Do as you’re told, and you might live through this,” Bolan said. “Disobey me in the slightest, and I will kill you. Frankly, I don’t give a damn either way. The choice is yours. Do you understand me?”

  Dan answered by nodding.

  Once the pilot was secured, Bolan called Stony Man Farm. “Bear, do you have an ETA on that Bell?” he asked.

  “You’ve got approximately seventeen minutes to prepare, Striker,” Kurtzman said. “The refueling facility is at the northeast corner of the airport. We’ve got a hazmat team en route to the airport, but it won’t arrive in time. It’s up to you to secure the package alone. We’ve contacted the head of airport security, and he should be meeting you any minute.”

  “Do we have a plan?” Bolan asked. “This is a fairly busy airport. If I go in cowboy style with guns blazing, there’s a strong potential for collateral damage.”

  “The security chief is bringing you a pair of coveralls identical to those the staff at the refueling station wears,” Kurtzman said. “You’re going to handle the refueling of the helicopter. I don’t think you need me to tell you how to take it from there.”

  “Here’s the security chief now,” Bolan said. “I’ll check back in when I’ve taken control of the helicopter.”

  Bolan exited the plane and met the man bringing him the blue cotton coveralls. The name tag over the breast pocket read “Jerry.” The soldier shed his shirt and trousers and donned the dark blue cotton jumpsuit, then made his way over to the refueling facility, arriving just as the helicopter set down.

  The Executioner didn’t need to tell the other workers to lay low; the head of security had to have briefed them and they were all beating a hasty exit from the area when Bolan arrived. He also had no cause to interact with the pilot, who had radioed ahead with his fuel order, so the soldier went straight to the fuel pump and began rolling out enough hose to reach the helicopter. He began to fill the Bell’s tanks, which would take a while, since they held a total of nearly three hundred gallons.

  While the first tank filled, Bolan casually walked around the helicopter, as if checking it over. When he was beside the pilot, he took a pen out of the breast pocket and reached into his coveralls, as if pulling out a clipboard. Instead, he’d planned to pull out his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, but just as he reached into the coveralls, the pilot pulled up a QBZ Type 97B rifle, a short-barreled compact version of the Type 97 designed for close-quarters combat and use in vehicles. The pilot had to have recognized Bolan as Cooper, even though he was sure he’d never seen the man before. Chen had to have made certain everyone at the Ag Con facilities had memorized his face. Even though Bolan had tried to be as careful as possible, he supposed that he’d been caught on a security camera at some point.

  When Bolan saw the barrel of the gun come up, he dived for cover under the helicopter. The pilot fired through the Plexiglas side window, but the soldier was under the helicopter before the pilot squeezed the trigger. Bolan heard the engine of the helicopter turn over and knew he was running out of time. He moved just underneath the foot well of the helicopter, which was covered with brown-tinted Plexiglas, and fired a round up into the cabin. The .44 Magnum round hit the pilot’s foot with enough force to disintegrate it from the ankle forward.

  In spite of his agony, the pilot swung his rifle around and emptied an entire magazine through the window, just missing Bolan as the soldier ducked back down under the helicopter. Being a refurbished military Huey, the Bell 210 had underbelly armor that couldn’t be penetrated by 5.56 mm NATO rounds, so once under the aircraft, Bolan was out of reach of the pilot’s bullets.

  The Executioner heard the engine power up and the helicopter started to lift into the air. The soldier lunged up, pulling himself onto the skid, thrust his Desert Eagle through the shattered Plexiglas covering the side window and emptied the remaining magazine into the pilot, shredding the man from just below his armpit to the top of his head.

  The dead pilot lurched forward, and when he did, the entire helicopter slammed down into the ground nose-first. Bolan managed to maintain his grip on the window frame when the helicopter fell the two feet it had risen, but the engine was still running at full throttle. The helicopter skidded ahead on its nose toward the fuel tanks. Bolan reached through the window and managed to hit the ignition switch, killing the engine.

  The Executioner opened the door to the rear compartment of the helicopter and was greeted by stacks and stacks of stainless-steel casks, each filled with enough prion-infected material to infect tens of thousands of cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

  When he was certain the site was secured, he called Kurtzman on his sat phone. “Is the hazmat team on its way?” he asked.

  “They’ll be there within the hour, Striker,” Kurtzman said.

  “What’s the status of the Ag Con facilities out west?”

  “Both sites have been razed, and all the cattle in the Ag Con herd are being destroyed. We debriefed Rog, and we’ve got him leading teams of researchers out testing cattle in the surrounding herds, just to make certain there were no accidental infections in other populations.”

  “How’s Rog doing?”

  “Fair,” Kurtzman said, “all things considered. He’s in better shape than the Bowman woman.”

  “Is Kemp safe?”

  “Yes, she’s back at her home. She’s asking about you, but no one’s been able to answer her questions, since you don’t officially exist.”

  “How about those technicians at the lab in the Killdeer Mountains?” Bolan asked.

  “It turns out to be a very good thing that you didn’t kill those boys, Striker. They’ve been a gold mine of information. It seems they weren’t too happy about Chen leaving them for dead in the research lab.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Pretty much everything, including the names of Chen’s accomplices, most of whom are holed up at the Ag Con facility in Ames. Able Team is on its way to Iowa to exterminate that rats’ nest as we speak.” Able Team was a crack commando team that Bolan had organized when he’d been directly involved with Stony Man Farm.

  “That should ruffle some feathers on Capitol Hill,” Bolan said. Ag Con had some of the most high-powered lobbyists in Washington, and they bought and sold members of congress the way kids used to trade bubblegum cards.

  “It most certainly will, but Hal has cleared it with the Man,” Kurtzman said, referring to the President. “Hal and the President are briefing select members of the Senate Intelligence Committee as we speak. Once they learn the nature of the threat we’ve just neutralized, it’s a safe bet that there won’t be a peep about all this from the Hill. There’s not a member of congress who doesn’t have a campaign fund that’s not padded with Ag Con money. Whatever is left of Ag Con after Able Team is finished will be a shadow of its former self, with no political clout whatsoever. If they somehow remain in business, they’ll have no choice but to fly straight.”

  “What about Dan Gould?” Bolan asked.

  “That’s between the two of you,” Kurtzman said. “Handle that situation as you see fit.”

  Bolan pondered his options concerning Dan as he returned to the plane. He untied the man without saying a word.

  Finally Dan broke the sil
ence. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Refuel the plane. We’re going back to Watford City.”

  Once up in the air, Bolan said, “If you were me, what would you do about you?”

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “Think about it. If you were me, and you had the opportunity to rid the world of one more drug dealer, and no one on Earth would care about his disappearing, what would you do?”

  Dan didn’t answer.

  “The reason I ask you this,” Bolan said, “is because I’m giving you the option of making my decision for me.”

  “What?”

  “You might want to expand your vocabulary,” Bolan told Dan. “‘What’ is starting to get monotonous.”

  “What?”

  “The way I see it, you’ve got two options,” Bolan said. “Disband your drug operation and be satisfied with your legitimate business interests, or meet the same fate as your cousin and spend eternity in a shallow Badlands grave. You must make decent money from your car dealerships.”

  “It’s not what it used to be, but yeah, I do all right.”

  “It seems to me that ‘all right’ is a major improvement over dead. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  Dan seemed to be thinking over the Executioner’s offer. Clearly he hadn’t expected to live to see the sun rise one more time.

  “Make no mistake,” Bolan said. “If you choose to live, you will not have the option of going back into the business you and your deceased cousin operated. You so much as sell one gram of meth and I hear about it, I will hunt you down and I will kill you. You won’t have to worry about legal fees, lawyers, or prisons, because I will be your judge, your jury and your executioner. And when I carry out the sentence, it won’t be quick, clean and easy, the way it was for your cousin. If I have to come all the way back to western North Dakota to fulfill my promise, I’m going to make it as entertaining as possible. Do you understand?” Dan only nodded. Bolan had exaggerated on that last point. Though he would indeed make the return trip to remove an active drug dealer from the community, he would take no joy in doing so, and he would make the hit as quick and humane as possible. He just felt the slight exaggeration might give Gould extra incentive to walk the straight and narrow.