Fire Zone

Kill the man, then the woman. That was how the solitary killer had moved. Professional. Very professional.

“What do you see at the edge of the forest?”

Bolan’s stride lengthened as he went to the worst of the burned area along the meadow. The fire had ravaged the terrain and had moved a mile farther east, where it still roared uphill with voracious intensity. It took only a couple minutes for him to find what remained of one detonator cap and the radio unit that had set off the explosive. He rubbed his fingers over the ground but came up with only soot. Any of the grainy PETN likely used would be completely oxidized.

“He knew what he was doing,” Bolan said.

“Latest intel says there is an African PMC on the prowl. We’re pinging the CIA and FBI for info on them now to get a better identification.”

“That’s a mighty big continent.”

Kurtzman did not respond, and Bolan hadn’t expected him to. He ended the call and pulled out his map and oriented himself, then set off running downhill in the direction of the Lucky Nugget Mine, reaching the tall cyclone fence around the property in under a half hour. He took slow, deep breaths and calmed his pounding heart. Having been at altitude in the Rockies for the prior week helped, but the thin Idaho air still took its toll on him.

As he rested, hands on knees, he looked around the mine site. From the dozen signs painted with huge red letters, this property was owned by Lassiter Industries, a multinational conglomerate owning not only gold mines but copper, silver, manganese and every other metal known to man. Rested, he tossed a broken branch against the fence to see if he might get a shock or trigger an alarm. Seeing no response, and hearing only the miles-distant crackle of a forest being destroyed by fire, he scaled the fence, deftly avoiding the barbed wire strands on top, then dropped lightly to the ground inside.

He reached a well-traveled road and saw a couple abandoned trucks. Of the large crew required to work a mine this size, he saw nothing.

Some equipment had been properly shut down, but most had been hastily abandoned. He knew what had happened. Sirens warned of the forest fire. The miners had to evacuate the mine or risk being trapped a half mile underground if the fire swept this way. Those aboveground would work frantically to get the miners to the surface, then they would all jump into trucks and evacuate. The sheriff’s department would be sending constant warnings the entire while. The scream of sirens as the firefighters came in would goad the miners into leaving.

Some might even be volunteer firefighters and join the effort. However it happened, they were all absent from the mine.

But the security staff would remain. Not of their own choosing, but orders would keep them here until the flames came close enough to singe their eyebrows. Bolan jogged to the main gate, which gaped wide. He peered into the glass-windowed guard booth and saw a man slumped on the floor. There was no reason to check his vital signs. The huge hole in the back of the man’s head showed where a single shot had taken him out.

Bolan turned from the guard booth and went immediately to the main office building. The double doors were closed. He tugged at one and it came open easily. The panic bar had not properly locked when the last employee had evacuated.

Halfway down the corridor was the sprawled body of a uniformed woman. She had been shot in the back of the head just like the other guard. Bolan moved from room to room. He found three more murdered security guards. Only one had tried to get his weapon free before six shots had punctured his chest. Examining the entry angles of the wounds convinced Bolan that at least three shooters had sighted in on the poor son of a bitch. From what he could tell, the same caliber weapons had ended the man’s life. The killers probably used identical model pistols. That would go with the military precision shown in this attack.

Bolan searched the building from top to bottom. Whoever had killed the guards had not looted the offices. Computers remained on desks. No drawers had been pulled out and searched. Obviously valuable display ingots remained in glass cases in the hallways. Since he found no one alive in the rest of the building to give him eyewitness information, he exited to search other parts of the sprawling mine complex.

Like a compass needle finding magnetic north, he was drawn to a large shed nearby. Heavy steel doors that had once been held closed by intricate locks stood open. Reaching down, he drew his Desert Eagle and let the muzzle precede him into the well-lit interior. Vaults along the walls were open and empty. The guards positioned at all four upper corners of the building on catwalks had been shot. From the look of it, they had put up a fierce fight but had been overwhelmed by superior firepower.

Walking into the empty expanse in the middle of the building, Bolan saw where a truck had stood next to a loading dock. It took no effort for him to imagine a half-dozen men swarming into the vaults, removing the gold and loading it into the truck before driving away with their valuable cargo.

He had only one more bit of intel to gather. It was surprisingly easy to find the manifests for each of the looted vaults. He kept a running inventory in his head as he read the numbers.

When he finished the tally he stood and stared out the doors where the truck had left.

Three-quarters of a ton of gold stolen. Fifteen thousand pounds. Well over ten million dollars.

His strides long and determined, Bolan left the building, found a car that could be hot-wired easily and roared off in pursuit of the thieves. They couldn’t be more than a few hours ahead of him. With that much of a load on the narrow, winding road leading down into Boise, they wouldn’t be able to match his breakneck pace.

2

The Executioner drove expertly and far too fast for the narrow gravel road. The mining company had maintained the road well, but hitting ninety in the straightaways and only dropping to sixty in the sharp turns took its toll on his acquired car. Every turn left that much more rubber behind and caused an increasingly uneven ride. Before long the punishment he dished out to the car caused the engine to begin sputtering.

He let up on the gas just a little when he saw an eighteen-wheeler lumbering along ahead. He was still miles outside Boise, and a quick mental calculation of the distance traveled told him this could be the stolen gold. Using the engine compression to brake, he took his foot off the accelerator and coasted into a slot directly behind the truck so that he ran in its blind spot only inches away from the bumper. The driver would have seen him approaching and by now had to know something was wrong. If he slammed on the brakes, Bolan would have to act instantly.

Such a sudden stop was what he expected. That was what he would do to try to get rid of the annoying tail he presented if the roles were reversed. But the driver tapped his brakes, sounded his horn and began slowing gradually. Suspecting a trap, the Executioner followed suit until both truck and car were at a dead stop.

He slid the .50-caliber pistol from its holster and got out of the car. Holding the heavy Desert Eagle at his side, he edged around cautiously. The truck driver had already exited the cab, looking madder than hell.

“What do you think you’re doing? This ain’t a demolition derby!”

The man waved his arms around like a windmill. Bolan didn’t see a weapon but recognized the tactic as a diversion. He ducked away, looked under the eighteen-wheeler but saw no one trying to sneak up on him from the other side. He did hear muffled noises from inside the truck.

Whirling back, he lifted his pistol. The sight of the huge bore pointed in his direction caused the driver to gasp. His mouth dropped open. He tried to speak but no words came out, and his flailing arms stopped their wild motion as he held them high above his head.

“What’s in the back?”

“I…you a cop?”

“Open it.”

The driver swallowed hard and shuffled around, keeping an eye on Bolan and the pistol in his hand. With his fist he banged twice on the door and yelled, “Mr. Kersey, I’m openin’ up.” The driver lifted the locking rod and stepped away when the door swung open.

Bolan was prepared for a hail of bullets. He was not expecting a man and several frightened women looking out.

“What’s going on?”

“Mr. Kersey, he drove up behind and stopped me and stuck that gun in my face and—”

“Shut up.” Bolan wanted answers. “Why are you in the rear of a semi?”

“Are you some kind of police officer?”

“I’m asking, you’re answering.”

“Well, put that damn thing down. My name’s Jerome Kersey and I’m the superintendent of the Lucky Nugget Mine. I work for Lassiter Industries and—”

“You’re all employees?”

“Who’d you think we were? You ordered us to evacuate, and my staff and I were the last ones out. We had to get into this semi because you said the roads were clogged and didn’t want a lot of cars adding to the traffic jam. You are from the State Police, right?”

Jerome Kersey looked around and frowned when he didn’t see any marked patrol cars.

“What’s going on? I did what you people asked, and now you’re pointing a gun at me!”

“Who told you to evacuate?”

“The state police.”

Bolan’s mind worked fast. He saw the huddle of men and women behind the mine supervisor and knew these weren’t gold thieves. There was no point in asking for ID.

“Sorry about this,” he said, holstering his pistol. “Were you told to ship out the gold bullion from the mine?”

“No, of course not,” Kersey said. “That was all locked in the storage vaults.” Then his eyes narrowed as he looked hard at Bolan. “What are you saying?”

Bolan motioned him out of the truck and to one side where they wouldn’t be overheard. He gave the man a quick once-over and saw no suspicious bulges where a gun might be hidden or a knife sheathed.

“I don’t have much time, so listen carefully and answer fully,” Bolan said. Kersey started to protest. He was in charge of hundreds of employees and was used to giving orders, not taking them. The look on his tall, dark-haired interrogator’s face shut him up. He nodded once.

“The security guards left at the mine are all dead.”

“Dead?”

“The gold has been removed from the storage vaults. I estimate about three-quarters of a ton was taken.”

“I don’t have the exact figures, but that would be close.” Kersey had gone white with shock at realizing the magnitude of his loss. Bolan doubted his reaction was from hearing that his guards were dead. The theft of all the gold would be a career-ending event. “Who did it?”

“I’m trying to find out. How long have you been away from the mine?”

“Thirty minutes, maybe a little longer.”

This surprised Bolan. The gold thieves were even more expert than he had thought. Kersey and his staff had barely left the mine before the thieves had moved in. With this new information for his timeline, Bolan doubted killing the guards had taken more than five minutes. That meant the thieves had loaded just shy of a ton of gold and transported it before he had arrived. The slice of time allotted had been enough for them to vanish into thin air.

“Did you hear or see any helicopters?”

“Of course I did. Observation planes all over. Some heavy-lifter choppers with fire retardant or water or whatever the hell they use to put out fires. They’re all over the sky.”

Bolan considered this and discarded an airlift being the method of removing the gold. Every plane would be tracked closely by air controllers directing the slurry bombers to the fire. Any unauthorized plane would be spotted instantly. And Kurtzman had not mentioned any, so there weren’t any.

“This is an incredible gold mining region. More than three million ounces have been extracted since the mine opened,” Kersey said. “You’re kidding about my gold being taken out of the vaults, aren’t you?”

“One large truck would carry it all,” Bolan said. “I didn’t pass such a truck. Yours was the first vehicle of any kind I saw on the road. Are there other roads leading away from the mine?”

Kersey shook his head. Bolan had studied the map and not seen any.

“The entire Boise Basin is filthy with gold,” Kersey went on. He was beginning to ramble. “Centerville, Idaho City and—”

“What about logging roads?”

“This is a national forest. There’s no logging allowed. They hardly allow the railroad crews in and the trains are all diesel electric.”

Bolan had heard enough. He slid behind the wheel of his stolen car and wheeled around, kicking up a cloud of dust as he roared back in the direction of the mine. There had been a side road, but he had ignored it because it didn’t go anywhere but to the railroad tracks running near the mine. For whatever reason, Lassiter Industries had not run a spur line to bring in supplies and ship out gold. But the railroad was still close enough to make that a viable method of getting away with almost a ton of gold.

The dirt road came up on him fast. He stomped on the brakes, swerved the sedan around ninety degrees and lined up with the rutted lanes. Accelerating onto the rocky road, the car bounced around, sending him lurching back and forth in the driver’s seat. Bolan gritted his teeth and drove into the forest. These trees had somehow escaped the fire. As he drove, he appreciated the genius of the robbery even more. The fire had been set to go up the hills and away from this area. Sparks might have ignited the dry underbrush here, but the prevailing winds had made sure that hadn’t happened. Bolan wondered what contingency plan the gold thieves had if this part of the forest had been turned into a blast furnace like the rest of the timberlands.

He skidded around a tight curve and crashed head-on into a truck. He had an instant to brace for the crash, but the other driver was taken entirely by surprise.

The sounds of tearing metal and breaking glass filled Bolan’s ears as the car crumpled around him, but the shock of the air bag deploying into his chest almost knocked the wind from him. The Executioner rocked back, then pushed the deflated bag away. He was covered with talcum-fine powder lubricant used in the air bag and his chest felt as if an angry giant had tried to stomp him flat. Recovering, he kicked open the car door and dived out.

There were two men in the truck. The driver slumped over the wheel, but the passenger shoved an HK53 out the window and fired. Bolan hit the ground and rolled, coming to a prone position with his pistol ready. The shooter in the truck cursed. In his nervous haste, he had fired on full-auto rather than using three-round bursts and had emptied his magazine at all the places Bolan was not. The Executioner fired a single round through the side of the truck door. His target let out a groan, pushed the door open and fell to the ground where he flopped about in pain.

Bolan rose and sighted in, only to jerk to the side. A slug ripped through the air where his head had been a split second earlier. He landed hard on his side and fired three quick rounds. One went through the truck’s windshield. The other two grazed off the now-starred glass. Through the spiderweb of cracked glass, Bolan saw that the driver was now moving. The crash had only stunned him.

The Executioner made a quick decision. He got to his feet and circled the truck until he got to a spot where he saw more movement inside. Bolan fired twice more and completely destroyed the windshield.

“Don’t shoot. I surrender. I’m coming out.”

Bolan wanted the man alive but knew a trap when he heard it. These men were professionals and did not surrender after a few shots were exchanged.

“Here’s my rifle.”

A SIG SG-551 short-barreled assault rifle came tumbling out and landed in a patch of weeds beside the road. Bolan saw that the receiver was partially open. The rifle had fired once and then jammed.

“I’m coming out. Please don’t kill me.”

Bolan fired the instant he had a decent shot. The man fell from the cab and landed facedown on the ground. He pushed up and turned to face Bolan. The expression on his face was not one of betrayal at the violation of a surrender but one of utter hatred because he had been outwitted. Then the hand grenade he had intended for Bolan exploded beneath him and lifted his body three feet straight up in the air. The lifeless body crashed to the ground.

Swinging around, Bolan trained his Desert Eagle on the first man out of the truck. He cursed. The man had sneaked off. Bolan needed information, and only one of the mercenaries was left alive to tell him what he needed to know.

He ducked low and looked under the bed of the truck. Nothing. Advancing in a crouch, he went to the rear of the truck and chanced a quick look inside. All he saw was a stack of suitcase-sized wooden boxes partially covered with a tarp. No one could hide under that. Wherever the passenger had gone, it wasn’t to get into the truck to die. Bolan ejected the magazine in his pistol and reloaded. He wanted a full clip when he found his man.

A quick glance showed how his target had rolled into a shallow ditch alongside the road and then crawled away fast. The Executioner’s quarry had reached a small stand of junipers. Knowing he faced a wounded man who was carrying at least a sidearm and maybe grenades like the driver, Bolan used a large tree as cover. He listened hard but heard nothing moving. The animals in the woods had fallen silent, telling him a human had disturbed them. He listened but heard nothing until a deep inhalation told him where to look. Then he caught the scent of sweat, blood and something unpleasant—cooked flesh.

He slipped around the tree and looked up. Partially hidden ten feet up among the foliage of an oak tree limb lay his camo-dressed prey. Bolan fired three times. The heavy .50-caliber slugs ripped enough wood away from the limb to bring it down. Amid the foliage the stunned man stirred and tried to get away. Bolan fired again but just missed and then had to dodge behind the juniper as the merc fired wildly in his direction.

Bolan took no pleasure at being right about how the man was armed. He had a job to do and was taking too long. All the gunfire would attract the rest of the gang. Judging from the ease with which they had moved through the Lucky Nugget Mine complex, he estimated at least ten had taken part in the operation. Added to the ones in the field setting the fires, he might face twice that if he let them home in on him.

“Who are you working for?” Bolan called out, not expecting an answer.

To his surprise, he garnered a heartfelt “Go to hell.”

The accent was faintly European, but Bolan doubted the man had learned English as his second or even third language.

“Africa? South Africa? Afrikaans?”

Bolan wanted to fix his location in the man’s thoughts by calling out all the inane questions. He scaled the tree and kept climbing until he came to a limb strong enough to support him. Bolan slithered out on it like a snake and then trained his weapon on the man below where he struggled to get away from the bullet-riddled tree limb.

His finger drew back smoothly as he squeezed off the shot. The heavy slug tore through the mercenary’s right shoulder, driving him flat onto the ground. His right arm twitched as he tried to lift his pistol. As he reached over with his left hand, he froze. His head came up and he looked down the barrel of Bolan’s Desert Eagle.

“Don’t,” was all Bolan had to say. The man collapsed and lay on the ground, seemingly beaten. Remembering how the driver had been so contrary, Bolan kicked the pistol away from the man’s hand, patted him down and then grabbed his broad belt and heaved. He tossed the man a few feet away, waiting for a hand-grenade detonation.

Nothing.

“Who do you work for?”

“The highest bidder,” the mercenary said. He struggled to raise his body off the ground. His left hand pressed into his belly as if he needed the support to hold in his guts, then he painfully sat up. “Just like you,” he grated out.

“Who do you think I work for?”

The mercenary tried to shrug, but the bullet he had taken to his right shoulder caused him to blanch in pain instead.

“Same as me. Highest bidder.”

“Where’s the gold?”

The man laughed harshly and turned his head. Bolan read more into the man’s quick glance to the right than he did in the words. The mercenary rubbed his left hand along his belly.

“Where were you going in the truck?”

“Going to blow it up. No evidence.” The man lifted his left hand. Bolan fired a round through the man’s head but not before a weak, determined finger pressed the button on a small radio detonator he had retrieved from some hidden pouch. The ground shook so hard it made Bolan think he’d gotten caught in an earthquake. Then the door opened on the blast furnace, and fire raced toward him from the direction of the truck. It had been wired as a gigantic firebomb intended to cover the mercenaries’ tracks.

Instead, it had given birth to a new forest fire that threatened to devour the Executioner.

3

The heat threatened to boil the flesh from Bolan’s face. Throwing his arm up to protect his eyes, he saw the worst had happened. The mercenaries had been driving back to the junction of the main road to blow up the truck. The resulting fire would cover their tracks completely.

He had to admit their scheme had almost worked—and it had almost killed him. If he had not pursued the mercenary he had blown out of the tree so aggressively, he might have been near their truck when it blew. As it was, though, he couldn’t get to his car to escape. Through the wall of scorching-hot flame, he saw the paint on the car he had stolen begin to blister. Then the entire car erupted in a secondary explosion as the flames reached the gas tank.

Bolan headed deeper into the forest. His flesh tingled from the heat. If he didn’t put some miles between himself and the fire, he would be charbroiled in only a few minutes. He fell into a distance-devouring jog that carried him along the dirt road toward wherever the mercenaries had come from. As fast as he was, as determined to escape the fire as he could be, the conflagration crept closer and began to warm his back. He put his head down and put on a little more speed, shifting his gait from a jog to a run.

It did no good. The inferno behind him filled the sky with burning sparks that cascaded over the landscape for hundreds of yards. Even sucking smoky air into his burning lungs, Bolan covered a mile in a little over five minutes. And he still wasn’t far enough away to feel safe. It was as if the fire toyed with him, letting him get a little farther toward safety before roaring to catch up and spit burning embers onto his clothing. Thinking to veer away from the fire at an angle, he turned off the road and found the dry undergrowth ablaze. He cut back to the road, hoping to go in the other direction, but found it similarly blocked.

He realized these excursions to either side of the road only wasted time and let the fire surge closer, so he continued along the road, eyes watering and lungs screaming from the acrid smoke. Bolan hoped to find out why the mercenaries had come this way but saw no trace of them or what they had been up to.

Running through the smoke-filled air was making it difficult to breathe. The atmosphere looked like L.A. on a smog-alert day and tasted like the inside of a barbecue pit. Over the loud crackling of fire dogging his every step, he heard the whup-whup of a chopper overhead. Bursting into a small clearing, he saw the small helicopter and waved.