Death Run

by Don Pendleton

Regardless, Botros would have to pay for his failure, though that payment would have to wait until after they'd accomplished their mission. Bin Osman needed the Saudis to complete the mission, and they were so close now he could smell success. Just another day and a half and the Islamic revolution would step up to an entirely new level.

  10

  Bolan and Osborne drank coffee in the soldier's hotel room, waiting for Kurtzman to get back to them. Osborne took a drink from his cup and winced. "You like your coffee on the strong side," he observed.

  "This? I take it you never had the coffee when you took your blacksuit training." If Osborne had tasted the sludge Kurtzman called coffee, anything else would seem like brown water.

  "No, I never did."

  Bolan and Osborne had spent hours cleaning the bloody mess in the bathroom and had just returned from dumping the assassin's body in the Team Free Flow garage complex. Bolan had sketched in the details of his mission to the blacksuit and Osborne offered his services to help the Executioner find the plutonium. Bolan studied the man. So far he'd proven to have the strength needed to do this sort of work, both physically and emotionally, and Bolan's instincts told him the blacksuit was someone who could be trusted.

  "There is something you might be able to do," Bolan told Osborne, "but it could be dangerous."

  "Worse than what we've already done?"

  "Much worse. If I need you for the job I have in mind, that'll mean I've failed to find the plutonium and you'll be sitting on top of a high-powered nuclear device. That would make you the last line of defense between life continuing in America as usual and something that could very well resemble Armageddon. The sensible thing for you to do would be to hightail it to someplace about two thousand miles from here."

  "You're talking about my city, Cooper. I refuse to abandon her in her time of need."

  Bolan looked at the man. Of course the soldier knew Osborne would not abandon his city, but Bolan had wanted to hear it from his own mouth. "Okay, I need you to go back to the city and remain ready to stop the Free Flow people from detonating the bomb if something happens to me in the next couple of days. For now you might want to go home and rest."

  "It's been a long night," Osborne admitted. "It's been awhile since I pulled an all-nighter like this."

  "I wish I could say the same," Bolan said. "I'll contact you as soon as I know anything."

  Til say one thing about you, Cooper," Osborne said. "You don't screw around."

  Osborne had barely shut the door when Bolan's phone rang. "What did you find out, Bear?" Bolan asked.

  "You're not going to like what I've got to say, Striker."

  "I don't like anything about this situation, so why should this be any different?"

  "I've narrowed the possible destinations of the van down to twelve locations."

  "Just twelve, huh?"

  "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or if you're just tired," Kurtzman said.

  "Both. Can you send the locations to my GPS unit?"

  "No problem."

  "How about my new wheels?" Bolan asked.

  "Problem," Kurtzman said. "I wasn't able to get another bike like the last one. In fact, there wasn't a motorcycle to be rented in northern California, so I had to buy one."

  "What did you get?"

  "I think you'll like it. It's another BMW, an F800GS. It's down some on power, but the top speed is almost identical because the bike is lighter and the handling is much better, both on- and off-road. You can actually take this one into the dirt."

  "When will it be here?" the soldier asked.

  "Within the hour."

  "Good. I have a lot of territory to cover if I'm going to check out all twelve locations." Bolan wasn't looking forward to trying to scout a dozen locations, but at the moment he really didn't have any other choice — he had to find that plutonium.

  "I've got one more piece of information that might help you. We've lost one of our top scientists from Los Alamos." Kurtzman referred to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, meaning only one thing — someone might have access to one of the nation's most capable nuclear scientists.

  "What do you mean 'lost' him?" Bolan asked.

  "I mean we lost him. He and his family have just disappeared. He was coming home from church with his wife and daughter and they all disappeared. We found their car abandoned between the church and their home."

  "Any chance he defected?"

  "Highly unlikely," Kurtzman said. "He checks out solid. And there appears to be signs of struggle in the vehicle. The wife left her purse and the daughter left her iPod."

  "Not good. If he was kidnapped, any idea who grabbed him?"

  "We do. We think it may have been MS-13." MS-13 was a street gang that had started out in El Salvador and spread to the American Southwest. In recent years they'd been responsible for a crime wave that had swept through Arizona and New Mexico.

  "Aren't the BNG and MS-13 mortal enemies?" Bolan asked.

  "They seem to have formed some kind of truce and they've been working together in a few different cities. It makes sense that they'd eventually link up. The Filipino street gangs tend to have close ties with the Hispanic street gangs."

  "What's the scientist's name?"

  "Gunthar Maurstad," Kurtzman said. "His wife is Nancy and his daughter is Mareebeth, with three E's."

  "Three E's?" Bolan asked.

  "Maurstad's from Germany, but his wife's people are hillbillies from northern Arkansas," Kurtzman said. "They can't help it."

  "How old is the daughter?"

  "Six."

  "You think bin Osman has them?"

  "It could be a coincidence," Kurtzman said, "but I don't think so. This doesn't appear to be a typical kidnapping. There's been no demand for ransom, and nothing was stolen from the vehicle."

  It may have been a coincidence, but the soldier's instincts told him that Kurtzman was probably right.

  11

  Because the Laguna Seca track was the westernmost track on the MotoGP circuit, the time difference with the rest of the world was problematic so the qualifying session was moved up from the usual noon start to nine in the morning.

  Eddie Anderson stretched on the ground in the pit area beside his motorcycle. He wanted to be as limber as possible for the session ahead. By the time he was ready to ride out onto the track, his head was completely clear of any thoughts not pertaining to the job at hand. His brother had owned Laguna Seca, both in his American Motorcyclist Association racing days and during his brief but spectacular MotoGP career. He'd set the lap record on his 990 cc bike, a time that no one thought would ever be beaten since the switch to 800 cc bikes.

  Maybe his brother's record would never be beaten, but Eddie felt he could do it. His bike was fast enough, and everything just felt right. He even thought Darrick would want him to break the record. In some strange way he felt like his brother was there on the track with him.

  Eddie rode out on the track and opened up the throttle. He'd hit two hundred miles per hour by Turn One and he braked hard for the Andretti Hairpin. He circled the difficult corner perfectly, hitting his apex points exactly where he wanted. He flew through Turns Three and Four as if they weren't even corners and took Turn Five faster than he ever had before. And he was still warming up his tires, preparing for his really fast lap. He hit his braking points perfectly for Turn Six and rocketed up the hill toward the Corkscrew, the infamous downhill left-right chicane. When he exited the bottom turn he felt like he was piloting a low-flying airplane instead of an earthbound motorcycle. He rocketed through Rainey Curve, completely forgetting the previous day's unpleasantness, and set himself up for the deceivingly slow Turn Ten. He hit his braking markers perfectly once again as he approached Turn Eleven — always his most difficult corner — and hit his apex spot on.

  After a couple of more laps, he was ready to start turning in some hot laps. He rode every lap a bit better than the last and before he'd even completely broken in his soft qualifying tires he wa
s approaching his brother's record lap time. When his tires finally came into their own, he rode the most blazingly fast laps of his entire career. When the dust had settled, he turned in a best lap that shattered his brother's record by almost a second. While part of him felt guilty about taking away one of his brother's proudest moments, he could almost hear Darrick cheering for him with the rest of the crowd.

  In the post-qualifying press conference Eddie, who had never been at a loss for words, choked up. The press had come to rely on his colorful statements to provide provocative pull quotes in their stories. They bombarded him with questions, but Anderson knew that if he tried to speak, he would burst into tears. Finally he managed to say, "I did it for Darrick," and he walked out of the building.

  * * *

  Eddie Anderson was supposed to stick close to the garage area throughout the racing weekend, but after the press conference he felt he had to get away from the masses of people at the track.

  He put on his street helmet and street-riding leathers, climbed aboard his Ducati motorcycle and rode away from the track.

  Anderson turned left at the gate and headed east on the Monterey Salinas Highway. Traffic was backed up for miles coming into the track, but since the races were just beginning hardly anyone was leaving the track and Anderson had the road away from the track almost to himself. He loved his motorcycle, a gift from his employers at Ducati. It was like an overgrown, overpowered dirt bike. It wasn't the most comfortable machine for long trips, but it was crazy maneuverable and wicked fun on a twisty road. Perhaps its only real drawback was that the rearview mirrors were virtually useless, especially when the big twin-cylinder engine revved up and started buzzing them with its throbbing vibration.

  Normally this wasn't a serious problem; a rider only needed to know that something was behind him or her and that he or she needed to be careful. It only became a problem when the person behind was a law enforcement official and the rider was having a little too much fun on a public road. Or in the case of Eddie Anderson, leaving the Mazda Raceway, if the person behind was a Filipino gangbanger who had been hired to kidnap him and take him to a Malaysian terrorist with a perverted need to torture him.

  Several BNG members in a modified Mitsubishi Evo tailed Anderson down the Monterey Salinas Highway. After another failed attempt to dispatch Cooper, bin Osman had redoubled his efforts to eliminate the meddlesome young Anderson brother and had a team of BNG members watching him at all times. The attempted kidnapping on Thursday seemed not to affect the kid and he'd continued to squawk about the death of his brother. He'd even mentioned him at the press conference after his record-breaking qualifying ride. Bin Osman didn't seem to be able to clip the loose thread that was the marauding American, but he could certainly handle this boy.

  After riding a short way Anderson turned right and rode south on the Laureles Grade Road, a twisty, empty road that wound its way toward the little bedroom community of Carmel Valley. He hadn't noticed the bright red sport compact following him so far, but he rode in such a spirited manner his pursuers assumed he was making a break for it and drove the Mitsubishi so fast its intercooled turbocharger glowed red hot. In reality this was how Anderson always rode motorcycles; his idea of a relaxing pace differed radically from what most riders considered relaxing — for Eddie Anderson, a hundred miles per hour felt so slow that he thought he was going backward, which is why he didn't ride on the street much.

  The Mitsubishi was one of the few cars with the power needed to keep up with the Ducati on such a twisty road, but the driver of the car was no match for Anderson when it came to skill. Without effort Anderson kept so much distance between himself and the overachieving sport compact car that he never even realized he was being followed. Before the trailing car reached the halfway point the driver had called ahead for help.

  Anderson rode as hard as he dared, watching for deer and cars coming out of hidden driveways, enjoying the freedom of being away from all the pressure of the track. He slowed to a sane pace when he rode into the more populated area around Carmel Valley, but he was still going too fast when a low-rider pickup truck backed out in front of him from La Rancheria Road. The vehicle took him completely by surprise because there was no reason for the pickup to be going backward.

  At least Anderson couldn't imagine a reason for the truck to be backing up, but the driver had a very good reason for his aberrational driving — he wanted to make Anderson crash.

  Anderson got on the brakes hard, but the dual-sport tires on his motorcycle lacked the grip of the super sticky race tires he was used to riding on and he broke both wheels loose. He missed the pickup, but in the process he low-sided the bike and it slid in front of the front bumper, Anderson following it as he skidded along the pavement in his ventilated leather riding suit.

  By the time he'd come to a stop, the driver of the pickup truck and a passenger had run over to where he was sprawled on the road. Anderson assumed they'd come to help him until he saw the Glocks in each of their hand.

  "Get up," the driver shouted. Before Anderson could stand, the Mitsubishi had pulled onto the scene.

  "Get in the car," the driver commanded, waving toward the open back door with his Glock. Before he could comply, two men jumped out of the back seat and slammed the motorcycle racer into the back of the car. One of the passengers jumped in one door and the other jumped in the opposite door. Fitting three average-sized Americans in the back seat of the Mitsubishi would have been physically impossible, but the two men who had jumped out were slight of stature, and Anderson's morphotype was about as far from the average American's as possible. Still, it was a tight fit and the two Filipinos pinned Anderson in the seat so he couldn't move.

  He watched through the windshield as the other members of the crew threw his motorcycle into the back of the pickup. They didn't want to leave behind any sign that something had happened to the young American rider. When the bike was in the pickup, both the car and truck left the scene. Anderson tried to imagine how he might exit the scene himself, but with one Glock poking him in each side of his rib cage, he knew that wasn't going to be easy.

  * * *

  Bolan was ready to start looking for the plutonium when he noticed Eddie Anderson changing and then riding away from the track. That worried him, but not nearly as much as when he noticed that Anderson was being followed by four men in a Mitsubishi sport compact with a loud coffee-can muffler and an oversized carbon-fiber rear wing. When the car drove past him, Bolan saw a distinct question-mark tattooed on the driver's arm. He hated to take time away from hunting for the plutonium, but he knew he couldn't let Anderson meet the same fate as his brother.

  The BNG crew in the Mitsubishi were so focused on following Anderson that they didn't notice Bolan's motorcycle tailing them. When they turned right on Laureles Grade Road, the Executioner was about ten car lengths back. He hadn't expected either Anderson or the BNG members to take off so quickly once they got off the main highway, but by the time he turned the corner and was heading south, Anderson was nowhere to be seen and the Mitsubishi was disappearing around a bend almost half a mile ahead of him.

  Bolan rode as hard as he could to try to catch up with the Ducati and Mitsubishi, but Anderson's riding skills were so advanced and the Ducati so fast that Bolan couldn't catch up to him even though he held the throttle to the stop for most of the way down to Carmel Valley. When both bikes were ridden by riders of equal skill, the Ducati Hypermotard was one of the few motorcycles capable of outrunning the BMW on a tight, twisty road like Laureles Grade Road. As good as he was, Bolan's riding skills were a long way from equal to those of Eddie Anderson, who many people thought might turn out to be the greatest motorcycle racer of all time.

  The Mitsubishi was just as hard to catch. Bolan rode an extremely capable bike for the type of road, but it was no match for a high-powered car with a well-tuned suspension and sticky gumball racing tires. It was a simple matter of physics; a vehicle's ability to negotiate a curve depends in large part
on the amount of rubber connected to the road. Not only did the Mitsubishi have four tires to the motorcycle's two, but because of the size and flat profile of the tires, each of the four had a bigger contact patch on the pavement than the rounded tires of Bolan's bike. Bolan soon lost contact with both Anderson and the gangbangers.

  Just as he pulled into Carmel Valley, the Executioner saw the Mitsubishi turn right onto Carmel Valley Road heading toward Monterey. A red pickup with wide, low-profile tires seemed to be following closely. Anderson was nowhere to be seen. When Bolan got to the intersection of Laureles Grade Road and La Rancheria Road he saw fresh skid marks that looked like a motorcycle had just crashed. On the side of the road he spotted a broken black plastic hand protector and a broken piece of red plastic. It looked like the fork-seal guard from Anderson's Ducati. He saw no other evidence of a bike or a rider.

  The pickup, Bolan thought. The bike might be in the pickup. That meant that if Anderson was still alive, he might be in either the car or the pickup. Bolan cranked on the throttle and rode to the Stop sign at the intersection of Carmel Valley Road and Laureles Grade Road. Looking right, he saw the pickup and car disappearing over the crest of a hill. Bolan jammed on the throttle and slid the bike around until he was facing west, toward Monterey and the ocean, and cranked the throttle wide open once he was straightened out.

  Bolan rode full-out through most of the little bedroom suburb of Carmel Valley. When he got the vehicles back in sight, he eased up, not wanting to draw the attention of the gangbangers or the local constabulary. Using other vehicles for cover so that the gangbangers wouldn't spot him, he followed the vehicles to Carmel-by-the-Sea, then back to Monterey, through town and up the Coastal Highway toward Santa Cruz. Because there were so many motorcycles going to and coming from the racetrack, the soldier's glowing headlight was just one of thousands on the road and the gangbangers never noticed they were being followed. The four-wheeled vehicles were forced to move at a crawl while Bolan could position himself pretty much wherever he wanted thanks to the mobility of his motorcycle. He continued to follow the vehicles through Santa Cruz. Out of town just a couple of miles beyond where he'd crashed the big BMW the night before, the two vehicles turned right onto Laguna Road.