Читать книгу Blood Play - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Any luck?” John Kissinger asked his friend Franklin Colt.

Colt shook his head as he slipped his cell phone back in his pocket.

“He’s still not picking up,” he said. “Must be all this rain has things backed up on the highway.”

“I guess we can stick around awhile and wait for him.” Kissinger glanced over at Jack Grimaldi, the Stony Man pilot who’d flown him to Albuquerque along with Mack Bolan. The Executioner stood a few yards away, his back turned to the others, cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Fine by me,” Grimaldi said, adjusting the brim of his baseball cap in preparation for stepping out into the rain. The four men stood outside the main terminal at Albuquerque International, an overhang shielding them from the drizzling remains of a downpour that had left pools of water on the sidewalk and out in the traffic lanes separating the airport from the outdoor parking lot. The Stony Man warriors had arrived nearly an hour earlier and deplaned on the runway, where, thanks to arrangements made by Barbara Price, an airport police officer had picked them up in a shuttle cart and brought them around to the front of the terminal, allowing them to bypass security screenings that would have turned up the small cache of weaponry and ammunition they’d brought with them. Colt had been out on the sidewalk waiting for them.

“No, let’s go ahead and get you guys checked in,” Franklin told the others. “I left a message for Al to catch up with us at the hotel. It’s just down the road and he’s got a room there, too.”

“Works for me,” Kissinger said.

Bolan rejoined the others once he was off the phone. After Kissinger filled him in, the Executioner replied, “There’s been a change in plans on our end, too. Seattle’s off. I’ll give you the details later.”

Colt grinned knowingly. “I’ve got a better idea,” he suggested. “Why don’t I go get the car and swing by to pick you up? That’ll give you time to debrief…or whatever it is you guys call it.”

“Appreciate it,” Bolan told Colt.

“I told John I’ve got a little intrigue of my own going on at the reservation,” Colt countered. “Maybe at some point we can swap stories.”

The crossing light changed before the Stony Men could reply. As Colt headed out into the rain and sidestepped puddles on his way to the parking lot, Kissinger turned to his colleagues.

“He was kidding,” he told them. “He knows what I do, and who I do it with, isn’t up for discussion.”

“I figured as much,” Bolan said.

“Any idea what he meant about the reservation?” Grimaldi asked.

“Not sure,” Kissinger said. “He mentioned it when we first spoke but all he said was that things were a little hinky there. Probably something at the casino.”

“He seems like a straight-up guy,” Bolan said.

“Franklin’s the best,” Kissinger said. “I still can’t believe we fell out of touch for so long.”

Years ago, Kissinger and Colt, a full-blooded Rosqui Indian, had worked together as field agents for the DEA and forged a strong friendship. Kissinger had saved Colt’s life during a drug raid a few months after they’d partnered up, and Colt had returned the favor less than a year later, taking a few rounds while shoving his colleague out of the line of fire during a botched undercover operation.

The wounds had been severe enough to place Colt on extended medical leave, and though Kissinger had initially made a point to keep tabs on the other man’s recuperation, as time passed and Kissinger’s shift into covert operations demanded more secrecy, their contact had become sporadic and, as often happened with even the best of friends, eventually the men had drifted apart. More than a dozen years had slipped away before Kissinger sought to reestablish contact. With help from Stony Man’s cybercrew he’d been able to track Colt down to the Rosqui reservation north of Santa Fe, where he worked graveyard shift as a security officer for Roaming Bison Casino, one of several tribal-owned resorts located just off the major interstates running through New Mexico.

After a two-hour long-distance phone conversation, Colt had suggested a face-to-face reunion. Kissinger had been all for it and volunteered to fly out to Albuquerque, where he figured he could squeeze in some business for the Farm by attending the city’s annual New Military Technologies Expo. Kissinger had mentioned that his present government work was classified, but Colt had assumed it had something to do with Cowboy’s fascination with firearms and weapons systems. He’d suggested that Kissinger meet his poker buddy Alan Orson, who was driving in from Taos to run an NMT booth featuring several of his latest inventions. Kissinger was already familiar with some of Orson’s patents and looked forward to seeing what else the inventor had up his sleeve. Should Orson have something worth adding to the Farm’s arsenal, Kissinger knew SOG had the funding—and clout—to get first crack at putting any invention to use. For the moment, however, those considerations would have to wait on Orson’s arrival from Taos.

As they waited for Colt to pick them up, Grimaldi asked Bolan, “So, what’s up with Seattle?”

“Canada beat us to the punch,” Bolan explained. “I didn’t get the details, but apparently CSIS staged a couple preemptive raids across the border. They turned up grenade launchers and plastic explosives in a shipment of machinery parts earmarked for some retrofitting business in Takoma.” CSIS was the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“‘Retrofitting’ my ass,” Kissinger said.

Bolan and Grimaldi had their backs to the airport traffic lanes but Cowboy was facing the other way and, glancing over their shoulders, he could see Colt cross the street to the outdoor parking area. When they’d spoken on the phone, Franklin had boasted about the restoration work he’d done on a vintage 1969 Chevy Nova, and Kissinger could see the muscle car out in the parking lot, its yellow, laquered coat almost gleaming in the rain.

“Sounds like they shut down the suppliers,” Grimaldi told Bolan, “but what about the guys that stuff was being sent to?”

“That’s still on Able’s plate,” Bolan said. “They were already working the Takoma angle and figure they can follow through on their own.”

“If that’s the case, it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a minivacation,” Grimaldi said. “Sweet. Maybe we can get in that card game Colt was talking about.”

“Hang on, guys,” Kissinger murmured, eyes on the parking lot. “Something’s not right.”

Across the roadway, Colt had made his way past a handful of parked cars and was circling around his Nova when he was intercepted by two men bounding out of an unmarked black panel truck parked next to him. Kissinger’s first thought had been that one of the men was probably Alan Orson, but as he watched on, a sudden scuffle broke out between Colt and the others. Bolan and Grimaldi tracked Kissinger’s gaze to the altercation, just in time to see Colt being overpowered and dragged into the panel truck. Even as the other two assailants were clambering aboard, the truck was already backing out of its parking space.

Bolan and Kissinger were on the move. They sprinted into the pickup lane, their eyes on the truck as they signaled for oncoming traffic to stop. A cabbie was slow to respond and had to veer at the last second to avoid running the men down. Slamming on his brakes, the driver fishtailed to a stop, splashing water up past the curb and nearly drenching Grimaldi.

Bolan yanked a 9 mm Beretta 3-R from the shoulder holster concealed beneath his jacket. Kissinger already had his pistol out and both men braced themselves in the middle of the thoroughfare, drawing bead on the panel truck as it crossed the parking lot. There were too many innocent bystanders in the way, however, forcing the men to hold their fire. As traffic backed up in front of them, a number of motorists began pounding their horns. Bolan ignored the bleating as well as the cursing of the cab driver. He shouted to Grimaldi, “Get us some wheels!”

“On it!”

As Bolan and Kissinger broke their firing positions and crossed the roadway, Grimaldi slammed his fist on the taxi’s hood before its driver could pull away. The cabbie turned and glared when the Stony Man pilot tugged open the front passenger door.

“I need to borrow this,” Grimaldi said.

“Like hell,” the cabbie snapped.

Grimaldi produced his M1911 pistol and aimed it at the driver.

“I don’t have time to argue,” he said. “Get out! Now!”

The cabbie’s anger quickly morphed into fear. He put the taxi in Park and bailed out into the rain. Grimaldi tossed in his overnight bag, along with the totes Bolan and Kissinger had left on the curb. He was circling around to the driver’s side when a security officer raced out of the baggage terminal, his gun drawn. It wasn’t the cop who’d picked them up on the runway, and he had obviously quickly jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Hold it right there!” he shouted at Grimaldi.

“Federal agent!” Grimaldi shouted back, taking the risk of reaching into his shirt pocket for the certified Justice Department badge he and his fellow commandos routinely carried while on assignment. SOG Director Hal Brognola was officially entrenched with Justice, ensuring that even though the badges were issued under aliases they would hold up under scrutiny. Given the circumstances, however, Grimaldi wasn’t about to wait around for clearance. He pointed at the racing panel truck and bellowed, “We’ve got a hostage situation!”

The officer paused, which was all the time Grimaldi needed to scramble behind the wheel and slam the taxi into gear. Raising a rainwater fantail, the pilot veered into traffic, nearly sideswiping a slow-moving Honda as he crossed lanes and plowed his way through a gap between two of several sand-filled steel drums separating northbound traffic from vehicles heading south, away from the airport. A shuttle bus in the oncoming lane swerved to one side to avoid colliding head-on with Grimaldi as he wrestled the taxi’s steering wheel, foot still on the gas, bounding over the far curb before completing a U-turn and aligning himself with southbound traffic. Up ahead, Bolan and Kissinger had reached the sidewalk and were firing at the panel truck, which had just smashed through a swing arm at the pay station and burst out of the parking lot. The truck clipped a passing Cadillac and forced the luxury car off the road into a curbside planter. Bolan and Kissinger aimed low for the truck’s tires but the getaway vehicle veered wildly on the rain-slicked asphalt and proved an elusive target.

Grimaldi sped forward, then pulled to a stop alongside his colleagues. Bolan and Kissinger piled in, slamming fresh cartridges into their weapons.

“Stay on ’em!” Kissinger shouted.

“I aim to,” Grimaldi replied. “Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls!”

The Stony Man pilot floored the accelerator. The taxi’s wheels spun in place a moment, then gained traction and hauled the vehicle forward, past the disabled Cadillac.

The chase was on.

BY THE TIME THE panel truck had left the parking lot, Franklin Colt’s abductors had already stripped him of his cell phone and hog-tied him by the wrists and ankles with duct tape. There were no seats in the rear of the truck, and Colt lay pinned against the cold metal floor, his captors kneeling on either side of him. They’d pulled a stocking cap down over his head, as well, and there was little he could see through the tight-woven fabric. He assumed the men were hoping to conceal their identities, but during the brief skirmish in the parking lot he’d gotten a good look at them. He didn’t know them by name, but he recognized them from the casino. They were regulars who spent most of their time at the roulette and blackjack tables. Franklin suspected they were more than mere players, however, given their burly physiques and the frequency with which they would wander off to the main bar to meet with one of the pit bosses whenever they went on break. Judging from their accents, he figured the thugs, like most of the casino’s executive personnel, were either from Eastern Europe or Russia. He had a good idea, as well, as to why they’d taken him hostage.

“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.