Slayground

“Indeed,” Yates said drily as he reached for the phone. “I don’t mind setting them against each other if it makes me a profit, but someone like Cooper is not going to give me that kind of pleasure. If he’s a government man of any stripe, then I think I may have a shrewd suspicion of where he’s headed.” As he spoke, he punched in a number.

“Ah, Ricke,” he purred into the mouthpiece, “I think I have something that might be of interest to you.... No, no, Duane hasn’t been causing any problems.... I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but I think you should be aware of a few facts that have come to my attention....”

* * *

BOLAN TOOK A COUPLE hours to get away from the Miami metropolitan area and out into the county that was his destination. Once he crossed the border, he left the highways and took the smaller roads that led him to Griffintown. By the time he drove down the main drag it was dusk, and some of the larger stores were shut. The smaller mom-and-pop operations were still open, as were the diners and coffee shops. There was no mall on the outskirts of this town, so the streets were still busy. It looked idyllic.

At one end of the community was the small industrial park that housed the Midnight Examiner’s printing plant and editorial offices. Six stories tall, the building dwarfed everything else in town. In the evening light, it wasn’t too fanciful to see how the town was dominated by the tabloid and its owners. How much they knew about the secretive cult on their stoop was something Bolan wanted to probe, if possible, without alerting an eager staff to a potential story.

Right now, he needed a hotel, a shower and a chance to study the rest of the intel Kurtzman had sent him, before getting some rest and checking out the area around Eveland.

He found a quiet hotel with a white-painted wooden facade, a terrace and a swing in the front yard. Inside, the owners had gone for the colonial look. A man who appeared to be the same age as the dead security guard, Myres, signed Bolan in. The ex-soldier and sheriff’s officer should have been doing a job like this, not peddling his waning skills and waiting to be taken down. There was a lesson here, if Bolan cared to pay attention.

He was shown to his room, then thanked the proprietor, ordered a meal and took a shower. Over steak, Bolan studied the maps and topographic reliefs he’d downloaded. He had a fair idea of what to expect.

But there was nothing like the real thing.

Chapter 4

Bolan left the hotel at sunrise. As this was a soft probe, he dressed in casual clothes rather than his blacksuit, although he wore combat boots for ease of movement on what might prove to be treacherous terrain. He had on a dark T-shirt and pants, with a loose jacket under which he carried the HK, plus spare magazines in his pants’ pockets. The TEKNA knife was sheathed at the small of his back. In one of the duffel bags—the one not safely hidden with the rest of his ordnance back in his room—he carried the surveillance equipment, audio and visual, he’d picked up in Miami. He didn’t foresee any real dangers at this stage, since he wasn’t expected, as far as he was aware. Nonetheless, caution had to be balanced with traveling light and fast.

As he drove the sedan through Griffintown he saw very few signs of life—just a couple delivery trucks and a few people on their way to an early start at work. The monolith of the Midnight Examiner building loomed dark and brooding over the town.

Bolan was no reader of tabloids, but it did strike him as strange that the Seven Stars had never been mentioned in the pages of the Midnight Examiner—at least, not according to the background intel on the group he had asked Stony Man to collate for him. To have a loopy pseudo-religious cult in your backyard would, he assumed, have been perfect for the tabloid’s agenda. It could be worth his while to find out if there was a reason. Anything that might stand in the way of his mission was worth a few minutes’ detour. But right now, there were more pressing matters.

The road before him was empty. Lush, tropical vegetation and low-lying trees hung over the edges of the black ribbon of asphalt, threatening to take it back and absorb it into the swamps and rich loam that lay beyond.

He traveled on for several miles until his GPS told him he was approaching the old service road that cut through to the derelict amusement park. He scanned the sides of the highway for a spot where he could pull over and take the sedan into some kind of cover.

About five hundred yards from the service road, he noticed a semicircular patch of bare earth, likely formed by vehicles repeatedly cutting into the vegetation. Bolan figured it was likely to have been the sheriff’s transport resting up or lying in wait for traffic violations. He might as well take advantage; he didn’t intend to be long, and even if he encountered law enforcement because of this incursion, he could make use of the situation for further intel.

After pulling as far in as possible to shield the sedan from casual view, Bolan got out and shouldered the duffel bag, then took his bearings and headed into the overgrown flora that bordered the blacktop. He would probably be safe in that spot for a while, as it was still early and he had seen no traffic since leaving town. Evidently they were not believers in rising early in these parts.

The ground was soft, spongy with every step, and the roots and vines threatened to entangle his feet. There was no path, and he had to pick his way around tree trunks and thick brush. He could hear the scurrying of small animals as his approach scared them, the distant splashes as they ran through pools of water and mud in their bid to escape. Leaves in the canopy rustled as his progress disturbed birds nesting above his head. The constant background rattle and hum of insects made it hard for him to isolate any sounds that would indicate another human presence. If the senator’s daughter was being kept captive against her will, then it was an outside possibility that the cult would have defensive patrols around their base. Come to that, given the nature of the cult, it was possible they would do so anyway. Their beliefs would incline them to paranoia.

Despite the early hour, the sun already bore down and the heat pulled humid puffs of steam from the soil. He could feel sweat start to prickle on his scalp and the small of his back.

Bolan pressed on, zigzagging as the vegetation dictated. He advanced half a mile through the dense undergrowth before he hit a sparser, more barren stretch. Through the filigree of leaves on bushes that sprouted along its length he could see the gap where the service road cut through the growth, leading to the old amusement park. The ground here was sodden, and it sucked at his boots. Having to almost pull his foot free with each step slowed him down, and he sought a slightly firmer footing. The muck explained why there was less growth along this edge, and also why the service road had been built up, to add a firmer base.

Cursing softly to himself, he moved back into the denser, harder-to-negotiate undergrowth. The road and the stretch running parallel to it would leave him too exposed, too close to the park entrance.

Circling out so he would reach Eveland’s perimeter a good distance from the entrance, he stopped suddenly, senses quivering. Lurking beneath the sounds of the small animals and birds there was something else, something rhythmic and barely discernible. He was sure it was regular footfalls, now approaching him. He located the sound as coming from his right and about three hundred yards away. He was caught between what he must assume was an oncoming enemy and the edge of the park.

Bolan moved slowly forward, angling away from the footsteps. He kept low, using the bushes for cover. As the footfalls grew closer, he realized that there was more than one set. The rhythm was out of sync, an effect created by chance, and revealing that there were two people, one in pursuit of the other. Judging from the lack of urgency, he presumed that whoever was being tracked was unaware that he had someone on his tail.

Bolan drew back into the plentiful cover, unsheathing the TEKNA. The less sound he made, the better.

He waited only a few moments before the first footsteps were close enough for their maker to be revealed by the parting of the undergrowth: a woman, unarmed, with a rucksack on her shoulder. She was splattered with mud and looked far from happy. She was wearing shorts, and one leg showed a number of scrapes and cuts, presumably from a fall, but not deep enough to make her limp.

It wasn’t Elena Anders. For a moment, Bolan wondered if he’d struck it lucky, but a second look quashed that hope. Whoever this woman was, however, one thing was certain: the Seven Stars didn’t like her snooping around. She yelled in fright a fraction of a second before the tree in front of her was splintered and pulped by a heavy-duty shell. The deadened cough of the rifle told the soldier that the tracker had a clear sight of the woman, but was maybe not the best shot. Good. That gave him a chance to save her—whoever she was—and to halt her pursuer.

The woman was flat on the ground, sobbing and paralyzed with fear. The undergrowth around her kept her shielded to an extent. For the moment, her assailant likely couldn’t see her.

Problem was, Bolan couldn’t see him, either. Or hear him. The soldier scanned the thick covering before him, but detected no movement. He needed to get the woman out of the line of fire and draw the shooter into the open.

He slipped the TEKNA back into its sheath and pulled the HK from its holster, setting it to single shot and staring into the foliage. From the damage on the tree, he could narrow down the area the bullet had come from. More than one shot would attract undue attention from the amusement park occupants. The shooter had a rifle, and a three-shot burst would betray another presence. Bolan needed to place this as close as he could estimate....

The woman yelped in fear again as he loosed a shot. It crashed through the undergrowth and took a chunk out of a tree. There was no sound to betray the presence of the gunman, and for a moment Bolan thought the ploy had failed. But then a shadowy figure stepped out of cover and shot again, this time in the soldier’s direction. Bolan stood firm, knowing that he was hidden and that the rifleman was firing blindly. The shot smashed through the branches above him, high and wide. He stood his ground, keeping out of view while he took a sighting. Now he knew where he was firing.

He sent another single shot into the shadows, where his quarry had retreated. The woman remained where she was, crying gently and muttering to herself between sobs.

Bolan watched intently as the round disappeared into the undergrowth. There was little indication of whether or not it had struck home. He waited, listening for any signs of movement. The woman was starting to crawl across the ground. If she got to her feet she would become a target again, and that was the last thing Bolan wanted.

Who was she? If he could get her away from here, she might be able to share some intel on the cult.

To his right, Bolan noticed a ripple in the bushes. The last shot had not taken his man, but had been close enough to make him change positions. He was obviously trying to get a better view of the area where Bolan was secreted, but this brought the gunman closer to the woman’s position—too close for the soldier to risk it.

He slipped the HK back into the holster and palmed the TEKNA. Picking his way through the undergrowth, he ran parallel to the path of his intended target, who was easily traceable by the rippling trail he left in his wake. Bolan, on the other hand, was able to move silently without betraying his position. He crossed in front of his prey so that he could circle around and take him from the opposite side, where he would least expect an attack.

In position, Bolan waited for the man to blunder past him. He crashed through the undergrowth within a few yards of where Bolan stood. The shooter was young, no older than his early twenties, and appeared nervous, his eyes staring wildly and his mouth clenched in a rictus of fear. He held the rifle downward, but both hands gripped it tightly enough to make the skin whiten at the knuckles. He was hyped up, and the slightest provocation could make him fire wildly.

The soldier didn’t want stray shells flying around—not with the woman so close to them.

He let the man pass, and then slipped into his wake. Bolan took two steps to catch up, then snaked one arm around the man’s throat, pulling him backward, while the other arm punched up, driving the knife into the shooter’s kidneys. Bolan’s tight squeeze on his throat strangled any cry for help, or of pain. He twisted the knife before pulling it out and stabbing the man again, this time slipping the TEKNA under the ribs and angling up. He felt the man slump against him, and braced himself for the full deadweight. He extracted the knife and stepped away, letting the enemy fall to the dirt, his eyes staring sightlessly, blood bubbling from his mouth.

Bolan took the rifle from the dead man and slung it over his shoulder. He wiped the TEKNA on the guy’s shirt and sheathed it before taking stock of his surroundings.

There was no sign that anyone else had been patrolling the swamp with the rifleman. The only sounds Bolan could pick out, other than wildlife, were the sobbing and muttering of the woman.

He needed to find out who she was and what had brought her here. But first it was imperative that they get back on the road. There was no knowing how long it would be before the dead man was missed, and Bolan intended to be a long way from here when anyone from the Seven Stars came looking.

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