Fire Zone

Bolan wished the pilot had tried for the pickup. No guts, no glory, but the pilot was not a military flyer, and Bolan could not hold his caution against him. It just made his own evacuation more difficult, but the only chance he had was to trust the pilot’s judgment…even if the man might be one of the mercs who had stolen the gold.

The idea died almost as it formed in his head as a working hypothesis. If he had been another of the force that had robbed the gold mine, all the pilot needed to do was leave. Bolan would stumble about until the fire eventually overtook him—unless he was actually on his way clear of the fire. Knowing the danger of analysis paralysis, Bolan lowered his head and, putting every ounce of energy into the run, headed in the direction the pilot indicated. He burst into another clearing before he realized he was leaving a heavily wooded patch and saw a half-dozen firefighters setting up a small camp. Dressed in their bright yellow fire-retardant gear and respirators, they looked like creatures from another planet.

One turned and pushed up his face mask, letting his oxygen line drape down, so he could shout, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Had a car wreck.”

“You from the mine?” The man gave Bolan a quick once-over and dismissed him as an idiot who let himself get caught by staying too long after the evacuation warning had been issued.

“Just out for a drive when the fire cut me off from the main road.”

“That fire was set,” the firefighter said. He looked more intently at Bolan. The Executioner did not have to be a mind-reader to know the firefighter thought Bolan might have set the new fire.

“Something exploded behind me. A truck,” Bolan said. “The fire’s coming this way fast.”

“We know.” The firefighter turned to glance at a laptop showing an aerial view of the area. Bolan got his bearings and realized how lucky he had been sticking to the road in his escape. If he had veered to either side of the road for long, he would be fried by now. The detonation had sent out flames in a V pattern.

“Get him out of here,” ordered another firefighter with three bright orange stripes circling the arms of his yellow fire suit.

“You in charge?”

“I don’t know who you are, but a helo recon pilot just reported you were trying to get away. Said he saw a blown-up truck and a car in the middle of where the fire originated.”

“My car,” Bolan said.

“Buck, get this guy out of here. We don’t have time to worry about civilians. We gotta clear as much brush as we can to slow the advance, and we’re running out of time.”

The one who had spoken initially reached out and took Bolan’s arm.

“You heard the man. We go. You stay out of the fire, and I get to come back and do my job.” The bitterness in Buck’s voice told the story. He was a dedicated firefighter, and Bolan took him away from his job.

“Point me in the right direction. I can find my way out.”

This easy way out appealed to Buck. He rubbed his lips with a gloved hand, made a face, then inclined his head toward the far side of the clearing.

“I’ll get you on a trail leading downhill to the command station. Masterson only told me to get you out of danger. He didn’t say anything about nursemaiding you all the way into Boise.” He pointed and started walking clumsily as he fumbled with the dangling respirator.

“You want to stay in your rig?”

“Takes forever to get it on and take it off. Just don’t go too fast for me to keep up.”

Bolan and Buck walked side-by-side toward the far edge of the clearing. Bolan turned around once to see the towering flames a quarter mile behind. The fire spread faster as it found more dried underbrush. The treetops were exploding with a sound like distant bombs.

“The crowns of the trees are catching fire,” Buck said, obviously worried. “That’s bad. The fire spreads faster jumping from treetop to treetop than when it burns along the ground.”

“You see anybody in the area?” the Executioner asked.

Buck stopped and stared at him. Bolan was sure the firefighter saw the butt of the Desert Eagle in its shoulder holster under his left armpit but said nothing about it.

“Just other firefighters. Two of us have already gotten caught by it.” He saw Bolan’s expression and explained. “The fire. It’s like some wild, uncontrollable beast. Two friends of mine were treated for smoke inhalation and are on the way to the hospital. More of us will join them before it’s over, since this fire covers such a wide area.”

“Arson,” Bolan said. “I caught two of the firebugs, but they got away.”

“You a cop? FBI?”

Bolan had no problem verifying that if it helped him find out more from the firefighter. Stony Man Farm specialized in counterterrorism, and setting such fires counted as terrorism, but the mercenaries he had already brought down only used the forest fires to cover their tracks. Gold theft was their primary mission in spite of the havoc they created.

“Homeland Security,” he said, which was close enough to the truth to be believable.

“You’re doing a piss-poor job of policing the borders,” the firefighter said unexpectedly.

“One job at a time.”

“Yeah, look, keep going in this direction. You’ll reach a creek. Follow that downstream until you see our base camp. There’s a couple hundred people there, so it’s hard to miss.”

Buck started back to his crew to fight the fire, but his radio crackled and the frightened voice sounding from it caused him to grab it frantically.

“Come in, Masterson. Repeat. Repeat. What’s your report?”

“Your team got caught and is surrounded by the fire,” Bolan said. He had experience enough to decipher almost any message coming through intense static and dropping words.

“Go, get out of here,” the firefighter said. He worked at the walkie-talkie but got no response.

“I can help. You can’t do anything by yourself.”

“I can get to them. We have to evac now.”

“It’ll be with casualties,” Bolan said. He had a mission to complete, but he wasn’t going to let Buck try to save the others in his crew alone. That would only add one more death to the impressive list of destruction the gold thieves had already racked up.

“They’ll chew my ass good for this, but you’re right. I need help, and I don’t care if you’re only a civilian. Come on!”

Two of them doubled the chance of rescuing the trapped firefighters.

“I’ll need some equipment in your camp,” Bolan pointed out. He did not give the firefighter a chance to argue. Seconds mattered. They retraced their steps, but Buck did not slow when they came to the stacks of equipment. He plunged on toward the wall of smoke masking the edge of the fire zone.

Bolan scooped up a respirator and goggles. The rest of the equipment—fire-retardant jacket, boots and equipment for clearing brush—was meant for the firefighters who would remain close to the blaze for a long time. He wanted only to rescue the men trapped so he joined Buck and immediately regretted not putting on a jacket or a fire helmet. Tiny sparks landed on his arms and in his hair, burning holes and causing distracting pain. But he had put up with worse in his day. He began squashing the tiny fires in his clothing as if swatting mosquitos.

“It moved fast this way. We never saw it coming because the copter pilot said it was following a dirt road, not coming downhill toward us.”

“The wind changed direction,” Bolan said. He adjusted the face mask and respirator before plunging through the wall of fire. The fierce flames clawed at him like some wild animal, but he burst through and came out in a curiously empty area already burned clean of vegetation. Two of the firefighters were flat on the ground and not moving. Another sat, clutching his leg and uttering curses mostly about the fire. The other two worked to make contact using their walkie-talkies.

“The stream,” Bolan shouted, making himself heard over the roar of the fire. “Where is it?”

“We’ve got fire-resistant blankets. We can weather it. We’re only on the edge.” Buck did not sound confident. One of the unconscious men was the fire team leader, and there did not seem to be anyone left willing to make independent decisions.

“They won’t make it,” Bolan said. He rolled over the unconscious fire team leader, then hefted him up over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Bolan did not wait for the others but headed in the direction Buck had indicated earlier.

He had hardly gone a dozen yards when he found a new wall of fire. Courage had less to do with his action than knowing this was his only chance to survive. Bolan put his head down and charged like a bull. He broke through the dancing flames and came out on the other side. If his luck had not held, he might have found himself in the midst of the raging fire rather than on scorched earth. Weaving through the blackened trees, he headed downhill with his burden and soon found the narrow but deep stream. He dropped his load into the middle of the water. Making sure the unconscious man’s head was propped above the surface, Bolan turned and started back to help the rest of the firefighters.

He got only a few yards back uphill when he spotted four men stumbling along.

“Where’s Buck?”

The lead firefighter shook his head. He tried to grab Bolan’s arm to stop him, but the warrior was not to be deterred so easily. He broke the grip and ran back. The wall of voracious flame he had breached before was gone now, moving on with a speed that amazed him. He swiped at his goggles, removing a thin sheen of soot that had kept him from seeing Buck limping along. The firefighter’s right leg refused to bear his weight. If he kept hopping that way, he would never get to safety.

In a flash, Bolan got to the firefighter’s side and slipped an arm around him to lend some support.

“You’re some kind of madman,” Buck grated out. “Nobody’s paying you to look after me. Hell, they’re not even paying me that much. I’m a volunteer, like the rest of my team.”

Bolan steered Buck off at an angle, goaded by the increasing heat at his back. They finally reached the creek and sloshed into it.

“Where’re the others? Where are they?”

“Get down into the water,” Bolan ordered. He shoved Buck to a sitting position. “They’re a bit farther upstream.”

“You saved Lee? Lee Masterson?”

Bolan immersed himself in the stream and felt every burn and blister on his body turn to ice as the water washed over him. He still had to use his respirator to breathe, but the fire now ran parallel to the stream.

“We’re gonna make it,” Buck said. “You saved me.”

“You’d have made it on your own.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. I think my leg’s broken from a spill I took. If it turned into a compound break, there’s no way I could have made it to safety. Hell, I couldn’t have made it to the railroad tracks, much less here.”

“Railroad?”

“There’s one that runs parallel to the stream, a mile farther downhill,” Buck said. “But what good’re train tracks? They’ve cleared the regular traffic just to be on the safe side. I wish we could get supplies sent by train.” Buck closed his eyes and choked back his pain. Talking kept his mind off his injury. “Even then, the higher-ups don’t like to depend on trains. The heat can actually melt the tracks and warp the rails. Then we’d have a derailment as well as a fire to deal with.”

“Clear the traffic? There was a train that came by recently?”

Buck moaned softly as he clutched his leg.

Bolan rummaged through the firefighter’s pack and found a morphine syringe. He expertly opened the ampule, then injected the drug directly into the injured leg.

“Burns. Never had a shot like that before.”

“You’ll get sleepy in a minute. What about the train?”

“Tracks,” Buck said in a weak voice. “Don’t know the schedule but the boss said they had to get one out of the way ’fore we could move in equipment. Equipment. Need…” Buck drifted off to a troubled sleep, but the pain was bearable for him now, thanks to the narcotic.

Bolan made sure Buck’s head would remain above the water, then yelled for the other firefighters. When he saw the bright yellow jacket with the orange stripes splashing downstream toward them, he knew Buck would be all right. The fire team leader had recovered and would provide needed guidance for the rest of his men.

Bolan left before the fire team leader reached them to ask questions better left unanswered. He made his way in the direction Buck had indicated and saw the railroad tracks.

This was how the mercenaries had gotten the heavy gold away from the area, with little risk they would be found out. Where did they ship it? Like a hunting dog on a scent, the Executioner went to the train tracks and began walking. His mission was just beginning.

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