Blood Play

“Who are those other men?” one of the captors bellowed at him over the drone of the truck’s engine.

“Friends,” Colt muttered, wincing as he spoke. He’d been struck in the face several times and his jaw was throbbing. He could taste blood in his mouth and traced the source to a split on his lower lip.

“Friends with guns!” the captor shouted. “Who are they working for?”

“I don’t know!”

Colt groaned as his interrogator kneed him sharply in the ribs.

“What did you tell them?”

“What would I tell them?” Colt countered, feigning ignorance. “What’s this all about anyway? What do you want with me?”

“You know!” his captor shouted. “Don’t pretend you don’t!”

“I’m just a res Indian who minds his own business,” Colt protested.

“We know better! If you know what’s good for you you’ll start—”

The interrogation was cut short when one of the truck’s tinted rear windows imploded, shattered by a 9 mm slug that lodged itself in the headrest of the front passenger seat. The driver responded by jerking the steering wheel, throwing Colt’s abductors off balance. One of them caromed off the side of the truck while Colt’s inquisitor fell sprawling alongside him.

“We can worry about him later!” the other man shouted. “We need to take care of these people, whoever they are! They’re after us in a goddamn taxi!”

The inside of the truck suddenly reverberated with the deafening reports of an assault rifle. Colt assumed that Kissinger and his friends were the ones being fired at. His concern for their safety was mixed with no small measure of admiration at how quickly they’d responded to his abduction.

Cowboy hasn’t lost his chops, Franklin thought to himself.

The second thug let loose with another autoburst, then cursed.

“Where’s our backup?” he roared.

WHEN COLT HAD BEEN taken captive, his abductors had made a point to take his car keys and kick them just beneath the Nova’s chassis near the left front wheel. Moments after the panel truck had pulled out and sped toward the pay station, SVR operative Viktor Cherkow had abandoned his surveillance post outside the baggage claim area across the street and jogged past stalled traffic to the parking lot. When he reached the Chevy he stopped and crouched in the rain, pretending to tie his shoes. Once the panel truck had crashed through the barrier and sped into the street, Cherkow grabbed the stray keys and let himself into Colt’s Nova. The plan had been for him to go through the vehicle for evidence Colt might have brought along with him, but when he saw Bolan and Kissinger fire at the panel truck and then take up chase in a passing taxi, the Russian decided the search would have to wait.

The moment he keyed the ignition and heard the Nova’s rebuilt V-8 rumble to life, Cherkow smiled to himself. He wasn’t sure how much horsepower Colt had harnessed under the hood, but he suspected it was a lot more than whatever would be powering the taxi.

“I’ll catch up soon enough,” he vowed as he revved the engine and shifted into Reverse.

In his haste, Cherkow squealed out of his parking space just as a Mercedes GLK was pulling forward from the space directly behind him. Cherkow cursed as he rammed the SUV, crumpling its front end. The Nova hadn’t been retrofitted with air bags, and the impact threw Cherkow against the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Dazed, the Russian groped at his bruised ribs. Behind him, the other driver rocketed from his vehicle and stormed forward, kicking the Nova.

“Look where you’re going!” he roared. “I just bought this car!”

The man had nearly reached Cherkow when the Russian threw open his door and pointed the MP-446 Viking combat pistol he’d just yanked from his shoulder holster. He fired a single 9 mm round into the other man’s forehead, then slammed the door shut and threw the Nova into first gear. His rear bumper was still snagged to the Mercedes and when the Chevy screeched forward, the steel strip pulled loose and clanged to the asphalt a few feet from where the owner of the Mercedes had fallen, spilling his blood into a growing puddle of rainwater.

Cherkow sped toward the pay station, reaching it just as the parking attendant had charged out to inspect the damage caused by the panel truck. The man dived to one side to avoid being run down when Cherkow raced past the pay booth and quickly veered past the disabled Cadillac so that he could take up pursuit of the taxi. There were no cars between them, and as he eased down on the accelerator, Cherkow quickly began to gain ground. Given the rain-slicked surface, the mobster was forced to toss his gun on the seat beside him and keep both hands on the steering wheel.

“That’s all right,” Cherkow told himself, “I won’t need a gun to take care of them.”

ONE EXIT BEFORE INTERSTATE 25, the panel truck abruptly cut across two lanes of traffic and shot down the ramp leading to University Boulevard. Grimaldi followed suit in the taxi. It would have been a dangerous enough maneuver on dry ashpalt and both vehicles nearly hydroplaned off the road as they took the sharp turn. The taxi, its front hood already scarred by AK-47 rounds, took on more damage as it swerved onto the shoulder and brushed against a guardrail before Grimaldi corrected course and eased back onto the roadway.

“Nice save,” Kissinger told him.

“Yeah, well, I’d stay buckled up if I were you,” Grimaldi responded, keeping an eye on the truck. “I’m sure they’ll keep trying to shake us.”

Bolan was in the backseat, pensive, Beretta at the ready. He’d only fired at the truck once since getting into the taxi, but if Grimaldi could get within closer range, he hoped to get off a few more shots.

At the end of the ramp, the panel truck turned left, heading away from the city. By the time Grimaldi made the same turn, there was nearly a hundred-yard gap between the two vehicles. The rain had begun to pick up, forcing him to peer through the mad thrashing of the windshield wipers. A streak of lightning lit their way briefly as the pursuit continued southward, past an industrial park and the University of New Mexico’s Championship Golf Course. By the time they passed the Rio Bravo intersection, the center median had widened and there was no longer any other traffic to contend with. Grimaldi gave the taxi more gas, quickly gaining on the truck. A quick look in his rearview mirror revealed the flashing lights of a police cruiser turning onto University Boulevard far behind them.

“No guarantee they know we’re the good guys,” Kissinger said.

“Hopefully we’ll get to the truck before they catch up with us,” Grimaldi said. He’d reached an incline leading to a barren stretch of flatland and coaxed the speedometer another ten miles per hour. He was now pushing eighty, and once he crossed over a bridge spanning a railroad trestle he slowly began to close in on the panel truck. They were within thirty yards of it when a face appeared ahead in the rear window Bolan had shot out earlier. Once again, one of Franklin Colt’s abductors raised his assault rifle and pointed it through the opening.

“Incoming!” Kissinger shouted, ducking in the front seat.

Grimaldi eased off the accelerator and tapped his brakes, falling back a few yards. Behind him, Bolan powered down his window and leaned out, rattling off a diversionary burst. The ploy worked. The Stony Man warriors heard the faint throttle of the AK-47, but its rounds flew wide of their mark.

Kissinger righted himself and clenched his pistol, his eyes fixed on the rear of the truck before them. The shooter had pulled away from the shattered window.

“Looks like he’s reloading,” Grimaldi said, flooring the accelerator. “Hang on, I’m going to try to ram them.”

AS THE TAXI BORE down on the truck, another jagged shaft of lightning brightened the desolate terrain. Glancing behind him, Bolan, for the first time, caught a glimpse of Franklin Colt’s Chevy Nova. The muscle car had been traveling with its lights off and had managed to sneak up to within less than twenty yards of the taxi. The police cruiser, by contrast, was still more than a mile away.

“We’ve got company,” Bolan called out to Grimaldi. “Give it all you got!”

Grimaldi spied the Nova in his rearview mirror and cursed. His words were drowned out by the Executioner’s Beretta. Bolan fired through the rear windshield of the taxi, clearing the way for a better shot at the Nova’s driver. Before he could draw bead, however, Viktor Cherkow suddenly flashed on his brights. The raised beams half blinded Bolan and startled Grimaldi, as well. The Stony Man wheelman had closed in to within a few yards of the panel truck, but the Nova had already caught up with him.

There was a sickening crunch as Cherkow beat Grimaldi at his own game plan and slammed into the rear of the taxi. He’d made a point to strike at a slight angle, and the cab immediately began to swerve out of control despite Grimaldi’s best efforts to compensate.

“Not good,” he murmured.

CHAPTER FIVE

The taxi had spun completely by the time it left the road and crashed into a guardrail. Unlike earlier, this time the car didn’t merely glance off the barrier. Instead, it snapped the wooden supports and left the railing in twisted shards as it flipped and went briefly airborne before landing upright on a steep-pitched dirt incline leading to Tijeras Arroyo, a normally dry flood channel that was now swollen with runoff from the day’s rain. The taxi was still turned around and momentum carried it backward downhill into the raging current. For a moment the vehicle bobbed on the surface, surrounded by clots of tumbleweed and other brush dislodged by floodwaters. Then, as water surged through the opened windows and shattered windshield, the taxi slowly sank and had soon disappeared from view.

Back on the roadway the Chevy Nova had also spun completely before coming to a stop. Cherkow groaned in the driver’s seat, his rib cage throbbing from yet another collision with the steering wheel. His right knee had slammed into the dashboard and throbbed with pain, as well. The engine had died and the right front headlight had been crushed, leaving a single beam shining through the rain, illuminating the stretch of road Cherkow had sped along moments before. Far up the hill leading back to the airport, a police cruiser raced downhill toward him, its rooftop lights flashing.

Cherkow grimaced as he retrieved his MP-446 and staggered out into the rain. Behind him, the panel truck had stopped in the middle of the road and was backing up.

“Nice work!” one of his cohorts called out through the shattered rear window.

“It’s not over yet!” Cherkow shouted through the rain. Favoring his sore knee, he hobbled to the break in the guardrail. He was staring down into the arroyo when lightning shone on the brownish floodwaters. Cherkow watched intently as the cab slowly disappeared beneath the floodwaters. He took aim with his autopistol, on the lookout for any trace of the men who’d been inside the vehicle. When no one surfaced, he scanned the dirt slope to see if anyone had been thrown clear. All he could see were the taxi’s tire tracks and a few pieces of sodden litter bogged down in the mud.

Behind Cherkow, the police cruiser reached the flat stretch of the roadway, and its siren shrieked to life above the thunder and harsh patter of rain. The Russian crouched behind the mangled guardrail and waited for the squad car to draw closer. When it came to a stop twenty yards shy of the Chevy, he raised his gun and lined his sights on the officer riding shotgun in the front seat. Behind Cherkow, the gunman in the panel truck took aim as well and let loose with his Kalashnikov.

The cruiser’s front windshield disintegrated and a stream of 7.62 mm NATO rounds took out the cop behind the wheel, obliterating his neck and jaw. The officer riding alongside him, already bloodied by flying glass, was next to die, struck down by a volley from Cherkow’s Viking. The man had partially opened his door and tumbled out of the car, landing on the gleaming asphalt.

Cherkow made certain there was no one else inside the vehicle, then broke from cover and limped back toward the Chevy. Before he could reach the muscle car, the rear doors of the panel truck swung open and the gunman with the AK-47 shouted, “Get in!”

“I want to check for evidence!” Cherkow shouted back.

“There’s no time!” the other man retorted. “There’ll be more cops here any minute!”

Cherkow hesitated, then changed course and staggered to the truck. His comrade helped him aboard, then pulled the doors closed and yelled to the driver, “Let’s go!”

Slowly the truck began to pick up speed. Cherkow dropped to the floor and sat, wheezing slightly as he ran one hand along his right side, trying to pinpoint which of his ribs had been cracked. Franklin Colt lay nearby, still bound and hooded.

“Has he talked yet?” Cherkow asked.

“No,” one of the abductors responded, giving Colt a fierce shove. “But we’ll loosen his tongue once we get to the safe house.”

Cherkow grinned at Colt. “Nice job souping up that car of yours,” he told the prisoner. “You gave me a chance to catch up with your friends. Too bad they won’t be able to help you.”

MACK BOLAN WAS DISORIENTED when he first came to and found himself immersed in the cold, murky water of the flood channel. He was still in the rear of the taxi, secured by his seat belt, slouched at an odd angle. The taxi had tipped onto its side as it dropped below the waterline and, though it had come to a rest at the base of the culvert, the vehicle continued to wobble slightly, jostled by the swift-moving current.

Air, Bolan thought to himself, closing his mouth to keep from taking in any more water. Need more air.

Reaching for his waist, he clawed open his seat belt then let himself float upward to the driver’s side of the taxi, which now lay closest to the surface and had yet to fill with water. When he reached the air pocket, the Executioner gasped, spitting brackish fluid from his lungs. He drew in a few deep breaths and submerged himself once more. There was no partition between the front and back seat, and he was able to quickly reach his fellow commandos. Grimaldi was still out cold behind the steering wheel, but Kissinger had come to and was freeing himself from his seat belt. Bolan reached through the water and tapped him to get his attention, then gestured, first at the air pocket above him, then at Grimaldi. Kissinger nodded and lunged upward as Bolan reached around the Stony Man pilot and unclipped his seat belt, then pulled him clear of the steering wheel.

Kissinger was coughing when Bolan returned to the ever-shrinking pocket of air and hoisted Grimaldi’s head above the waterline. He turned the pilot’s head to one side and expelled water from his mouth, then gently clenched an arm around the other man’s chest and squeezed him, just below the diaphragm. Grimaldi convulsed slightly and sputtered, involuntarily ridding himself of still more ingested water.

“Where are we?” he gasped.

“I’d say hell, only it’s a little wet for that,” Kissinger said, slapping away a small clot of debris floating near his face.

“We’re in some kind of flood channel,” Bolan guessed.

“More like a river,” Kissinger said.

A flash of lightning gave the men a brief glimpse of the water’s surface, which lay only a few yards above them.

“We can get out through the back windshield,” Bolan said. He turned to Grimaldi. “Think you can manage it?”

“I’ll sure as hell try,” Grimaldi said, coughing out the words.

Bolan went first. He drew in another breath, then dropped below the waterline and twisted his body so that when he kicked against the driver’s headrest he could propel himself through the windshield he’d shot out earlier. Once clear of the taxi, he extended his arms and swam to the surface. There, surrounded by floating bits of tumbleweed, he treaded water and fought the current as he looked around him. Uphill to his right was a small bridge spanning the arroyo. He spotted the section of guardrail they’d crashed through and, beyond that, the roadway and the flashing lights of what he assumed was a patrol car. His ears were clogged and a faint din resonated through his skull, but he could also hear the incessant wailing of a siren. By the time Kissinger and Grimaldi had rejoined him, two more sirens were competing with the peals of thunder. Bolan saw a squad car speed across the bridge, heading southward, while yet another cruiser was making its way down the incline leading away from the airport.

“Cavalry to the rescue,” Kissinger muttered as he swam close to Bolan.

Rather than fight the current, the men conserved their strength and allowed the water to carry them away from the road. Slowly they made their way to the culvert’s edge. Bolan’s legs were going numb by the time he reached a point where he could touch bottom. He lumbered up out of the water and collapsed on the muddy embankment, exhausted. Kissinger and Grimaldi straggled ashore soon after, shivering in the rain.

“What now?” Grimaldi asked.

As if in response, the beam of a high-powered searchlight cut a swath through the darkness and fell on the men. Squinting, Bolan glanced uphill and traced the light to a squad car that had pulled to a stop near the break in the guardrail. Two officers had already begun to climb down the embankment, guns drawn. With their weapons still back in the taxi, the Executioner realized they were no longer in a position to give chase to Franklin Colt’s abductors, much less take them on.

“For now,” he told his colleagues, “it looks like we’re going to have to play ball with the locals.”

CHAPTER SIX

Taos, New Mexico

One night every week for eighteen years Walter Upshaw had taught an extension course on Native American Heritage at the University of New Mexico’s Taos facility on Civic Plaza Drive. The tribal leader charged nothing for his services, and the class enrollment fee was underwritten by the Pueblo. The class was always full, made up of local residents as well as tribal members, and there were those cynics who derided Upshaw as using the teacher’s pulpit as a blatant effort to bolster his political clout and presence in the community. Upshaw always denied the claims, insisting that he felt it was important for both his people and the locals to cultivate a better understanding of native customs. Anyone who took the class would have backed him up as they invariably came away with the sense that Upshaw was truly passionate about the history and traditions of his forefathers.

Another part of the TPGC president’s weekly ritual for most of those eighteen years was the short trek to Taos Plaza, where he would settle in at his favorite booth at Ogilvie’s Bar and hold court with fellow teachers, students and anyone else who struck his fancy and would accept an invitation to join in on what would usually be a few hours of lively debate and raconteuring. This particular night, even the torrential downpour and a preoccupation with other matters couldn’t keep Upshaw making his usual after-class visit to the local watering hole. Only two colleagues from the university had decided to brave the elements with him and the bar was less than half-full, but Upshaw still managed to drum up a festive air among the small gathering.

As was his custom, the tribal elder offered to pick up the tab for anyone drinking something other than alcohol. A steadfast teetotaler, all his life Upshaw had bristled at the stereotype of “drunken Indians.” He frowned as well on most other forms of substance abuse, a hard-line stance that had led to an ongoing estrangement from his only son after Donny’s rebellious adolescence had led him to alcoholism and two prison stints, one for DUI and the other for heroin possession. Donny had gone through rehab as a means of shortening his second sentence and had been clean for over five months, but Upshaw had thus far refused to reconcile with his son. There was a part of him that regretted his recalcitrance, especially on nights like this, his son’s fortieth birthday. The sentiment, however, was always dwarfed by Upshaw’s grim memory of the day, almost ten years ago, when his beloved wife, Paulina, had been killed in a head-on collision while riding home from the annual Taos Solar Music Festival. Donny had been behind the wheel and had suffered bruises that were only minor compared to those administered by his father shortly after Upshaw had bailed him out of jail, where Donny had been incarcerated with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Taos being the small town it was, the two men had crossed paths countless times in the years since, but in every instance Upshaw had refused to meet his son’s gaze. During that time, Donny had e-mailed his father even more frequently, begging for forgiveness and making overtures for a renewed relationship, but, as he had with the message Donny had sent him earlier that day, Upshaw’s response had always been to delete the communiqués without so much as reading them.

While this matter weighed somewhat on Upshaw’s mind during the two hours he spent at Ogilvie’s, there was another, more pressing concern lurking behind his convivial facade, and once he’d paid his bill and started to drive home through the remnants of the storm, Upshaw dropped all pretense and brooded about his predicament with the Tribal Governing Council. Over the past few days he’d casually brought up the matter of expanding the casino with other council members and found, much to his dismay, that the majority of them were, at best, lukewarm to his small-scale plans. He’d avoided confronting anyone directly, but the response had confirmed his suspicions that Freddy McHale had indeed been lobbying under the table to secure support for GHC’s proposal to replace the existing structure with a larger facility and allow for a cleanup of the old uranium mines, a move that would entail sharing the land’s mineral rights. Worse yet, there now seemed a good chance that McHale was also right about the ground shifting beneath Upshaw’s political feet. The way things stood, Upshaw feared that if he were to run for reelection this time he might well be defeated. The prospect daunted him, and he was determined to do all he could to avoid such an ignominy.

There was plenty of time before the election, and in his battle to turn the council tide back in his favor Upshaw still had one potent ace up his sleeve. Franklin Colt.

Upshaw knew Colt from the latter’s periodic speaking tours throughout the state where, as a former DEA agent, Franklin spoke at local high schools and reservations about the dangers of drug abuse. It wasn’t in this capacity, however, that Upshaw saw Colt as an invaluable ally but rather the Rosqui native’s position as an officer with the Roaming Bison Casino’s security force. Colt had, over the past few weeks, been privy to a handful of incidents involving suspicious activity at both the casino and the reservation’s controversial nuclear waste facility. Looked at separately, the incidents may have appeared isolated exceptions to GHC’s overall management practices. Placed together, however, there seemed evidence of a pattern of covert activity that went far beyond the realm of profit-skimming and money laundering—alleged crimes that had led to the outster of Global Holdings’ predecessors. Much as he’d been tempted to go to his council members with these suspicions, Upshaw had held back, wary they’d be dismissed as the desperate innuendos of a man who’d do anything to hold on to power. What he needed from Colt was corroboration; hard, solid evidence that would convince the council that GHC was every bit as corrupt as the mafioso figures that had ruled Las Vegas during its early years as a gambling mecca. Earlier in the day Colt had called Upshaw saying he’d finally secured just such evidence and would forward it once he’d run it past a friend working for the government to get his opinion on its viability as a proverbial “smoking gun.”

Much as he looked forward to the revelation, Upshaw was concerned over the one possible concession Colt might demand in exchange for it. In a rueful twist of fate similar to those that drove some of the more compelling tribal legends Upshaw taught in his extension class, Franklin Colt had come to know the tribal leader’s son by virtue of the fact that Donny lived on the property of Alan Orson, one of Colt’s longtime friends. Insofar as the importance of family support had always been a cornerstone to Colt’s speeches about dealing with drug abuse, he’d taken Donny’s side and was insistent that Walter’s forgiveness and support was crucial to his son’s long-term recovery.