Colorado Kill-Zone

by Don Pendleton

  Colorado Kill-Zone

  The Executioner, Book Twenty-five

  Don Pendleton

  Dedicated to all the good friends

  in Colorado—especially to the

  Martin Men—and the pleasant

  memories thereof.

  dp

  We fight rather to keep something

  alive than in the expectation that

  anything will triumph.

  —T. S. Eliot

  Win, hell! Nobody wins this game.

  Survival, that’s all. But it’s enough.

  —Mack Bolan, the Executioner

  PROLOGUE

  War machine—one-man army—kill specialist—Executioner: these were some of the appellations adhering to Mack Bolan through two combat tours in Southeast Asia. It was an extraordinary time, and it developed extraordinary men, most of whom came home when their time was over and found for themselves a variety of ordinary niches in a sometimes less than ordinary existence.

  There was nothing ordinary about Mack Bolan’s homecoming. He returned not to the warmth and comfort of the family home in Pittsfield but to a cold back room in a funeral parlor and a trio of fresh graves in a rainswept cemetery. Sergeant Bolan came home to bury his mother, father, and teen-aged sister—and to arrange care for the only survivor of that tragedy at home, young brother Johnny.

  Mack Bolan never “came home.”

  Rather, the Executioner merely shifted the focus of his war effort—retiring from the pointless and impersonal brutalities of those distant battle zones to wage the greater war at home. It was not the spirit of vengeance that sent the one-man army exploding into the ranks of the organized American underworld; it was, rather, a simple recognition that the savages were taking over the civilized world, and that something needed to be done about that.

  Mack Bolan was uniquely qualified to do something. To know the man is to understand that, for him, there were no alternatives to the course he chose. To Bolan, his war against the Mafia was not a crusade but the minimum discharge of a maximum responsibility. He had the training, the tools, the desire, and the capability to “do something” as perhaps no other man alive could.

  The decision was no decision at all.

  It was simply a conditioned response by a trained warrior in the discharge of duty.

  Bolan “did it” to them in Pittsfield, then in California, Arizona, Florida—even in France and England—and by the time he began pounding the “five family” New York area the entire world of Mafia knew that this guy had come to play the game as the game had never before been played.

  He went on playing it, in the face of desperate countermeasures by “the enemy” and police establishments alike—growing into his destiny and rising constantly to each higher challenge along the warpath.

  Bolan had never expected to live so long. It was a suicidal war, and he knew it—had known it from the beginning. Certainly he would not have remained alive beyond the first few skirmishes with this “omnipotent” enemy had he not continued to grow and to profit from his experiences. To say that the grim-eyed man who quietly invaded the mile-high country of Colorado one cool evening was precisely the same young warrior who, a couple of dozen campaigns earlier, had returned from the Asian war zones to bury his own beloved dead could be a fatal mistake for those who say it.

  This was, sure, the same Mack Bolan—the Executioner, the one-man army, the war machine.

  But he was more than that now.

  Quite a bit more.

  This purposeful young man had become a superb war machine.

  There were those in Colorado who soon would be saying that he was some kind of superman. Perhaps that was true and perhaps it was not. Bolan himself would scoff at such an idea. But he would have reason to wish it were true.

  He was invading a carefully prepared Kill Zone. Theirs, not his. The target was Bolan. All the power and resources of this seemingly omnipotent and infinite enemy were concentrated into this time and place, coiled and waiting, geared to an all-consuming determination to write a final end to Mack Bolan’s war.

  “I am both ready to die and willing to kill,” Bolan had once declared.

  Colorado would provide the ultimate test of that, and of the man himself.

  Superman, no, not in the popular meaning of the word. Bolan bled like other men, knew pain and fear like other men—he would one day die like other men.

  A superb man, yes, in every sense of that word.

  In the Kill Zone they watched and waited for a superman. And there were those who thought for sure that they had found one … while others suspected that, instead, he had found them. As, indeed, he had.

  1: SHOW OF ARMS

  The Colorado bloodbath erupted at about dusk, on the eastern slope of the Rockies between Golden and Boulder.

  A few minutes earlier, Bolan had left the main highway to slowly cruise Golden, out past the School of Mines, and onto the two-lane blacktop which links the two college towns.

  It was, he knew, an invitation to combat—that maneuver.

  They had been tracking him all the way from Denver, just hanging loose and awaiting an opportunity to close for the kill. The twenty-seven-foot GMC motor home was not a difficult target to follow, and Bolan had no illusions as to his ability to shake the pursuers—nor, indeed, did he wish to.

  Leo Turrin’s worried caution rippled the surface of his mind as he left the outskirts of Golden behind him: “It’s a supersoft operation out there, Sarge. All I can get is odors, no intel at all. If you go, for God’s sake hold your ass with both hands.”

  But, no, the man from blood did not wish to shake his pursuers. He had, in fact, taken particular pains to reveal his presence in the midst of that “supersoft” operation. Ten patient days of quiet probing had yielded nothing of significance to add to Leo’s “odors,” so Bolan had used the only option available.

  He’d allowed them to see him.

  An open probe of Denver’s “strip,” Colfax avenue—a few indiscreet questions, here and there—and yeah, like clockwork, there were the hounds of hell sniffing cautiously along his backtrack.

  So okay. It was what he wanted. And he’d led them deliberately away from the urban sprawl of Denver and into an area with combat stretch. Not that Bolan was simply spoiling for a fight with this mile-high arm of the mob; he was still seeking intelligence, an angle into the “supersoft.”

  Now, though, he was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of that strategy. It had been a discreet tail, all the way to Golden. Then, suddenly, all discretion had gone to hell. The warwagon’s radio scans had locked onto a military frequency in the VHF spectrum, and the console monitors were rattling continually with a barrage of urgent instructions issuing from some central “command” for the deployment of “killers.”

  “Killer Five from Command, assume Delta One.”

  “Roger, Command, Killer Five assuming Delta One.”

  “Killer Two, give me a short count for radio fix!”

  “Command from Scout One! Bandit is tracking north on niner-three!”

  “Roger, Scout One! All Killers, scramble order! Close on Scout One, tracking north on niner-three from Point Delta!”

  So there it was.

  “Niner-three” was the two-lane blacktop running north from Golden.

  “Point Delta” had to be Golden.

  And Bolan knew that game plan. Someone with a military mind was running this “hunt and kill” mission. For one long and terrible moment, Bolan had to consider the inconceivable: could this be an actual military operation? Could the U.S. Army be out here on a hunt-and-kill against Mack Bolan? The answer to that was swift and positive: of course it could be! Bolan was, after all, one of theirs—officially listed a deserter. B
ut that answer simply did not compute. Those “scout cars” were Mafia crew wagons—and the people in them were street soldiers—torpedoes—not U.S. Army soldiers.

  It was, however, highly important that Bolan know the enemy. He did not engage in military duels with soldiers of the same side—no matter what their mission might be. It was another time to be thankful for the “special systems” built into the warwagon. He activated the optic scanners and remoted the display to the forward console, instantly acquiring a blurred telescopic image of the following vehicle. The “optic-lock” responded to Bolan’s command with a refinement of focus and a steady picture. The distance-measuring readout was indicating 400 meters—about a quarter-mile—and, yeah, it was the same vehicle he’d picked up on West Colfax—a big shiny Detroit black, fully crewed, armored—a crew wagon for damned sure.

  His own speed had dropped to about 30mph as he fragged out his consciousness to cover all the needs of the moment—proper attention to navigation, surveillance of that chase car, intellectual assessment of the situation. The chase vehicle had slowed accordingly, maintaining the gap. He brought them closer, via the space-age optics, until the windshield of that heavy limousine filled the viewscreen of his console. Then he sent a command to the infra-red “augmentation” unit. The screen took on a ghastly reddish glow while the interior of that vehicle 400 meters to the rear became illuminated with invisible light to offer further secrets.

  It was a positive make. No further doubts remained for the combat mind. The jump-seat limousine contained six scowling men, two in each seat row. Heavy weapons were in open display. The guy beside the driver was one Jingo Morelli, a cool operator out of Cleveland.

  Bolan switched off the optics and punched in a geo-plot, consulting an automated index for the micro-frame desired then calling up the display for the area he was then traveling.

  According to the plot, the Executioner was in damned lonely country. Sparsely settled, rugged terrain, damned few intersecting roads. As for present traffic on Route 93, there was none. Route 72 intersected at about halfway to Boulder, stretching toward the higher country. But Bolan was now betting that at least two of those “killers” were sitting up there at that intersection, awaiting the turkey shoot.

  It was obvious now. They’d sucked him. This was no hastily conceived reaction to a Bolan contact. These guys had been waiting for that contact—expecting it, wanting it, prepared for it. Bolan had long known, of course, that he would trip one of these wires, one day. As time wound on and the war pressures mounted, the inevitability of this moment had become more and more certain. He’d long ago begun to suspect each contact with this enemy as a possible suck plan—a whirlpool that would grab him at the first casual touch and drag him to the depths of hell.

  So okay. This one was obviously it.

  Colorado was a Kill Zone. That was the only logical answer to the “supersoft” high country maneuvers. A spider’s web had been woven here, probably with strands reaching everywhere. Then the whispers had gone down to the jungle telegraph, whispers which were designed to reach the Executioner’s listening posts—soft whispers intended only to incite the curiosity of a Mafia-buster—and they’d sat back and waited for him.

  Okay.

  The knowledge came as almost a sense of relief.

  Like the end of a long jungle night preceding a dawn jump-off, the battle itself became a welcome relief from the pressures of expectation.

  These guys wanted a fight, huh?

  So okay.

  Bolan activated all of the warwagon’s combat systems and turned close attention to the geo-plot. He was approaching a series of rolling hills, upraised fingers of the Rockies lying upon the edge of the high plains, as good a spot as any for the death stand.

  He awaited the moment when the crest of a hill momentarily separated him from the chase car, then summoned forth every horse available within the powerful Toronado engine to send the warwagon leaping away in the downhill stretch. The Detroit Black blinked into view at the top of that hill just as Bolan dropped behind the next one, and he could sense the consternation back there. The radio monitor quickly confirmed that feeling.

  “Command, this is Chase One! He’s spotted us, I think. Running hard north, about four miles from the junction!”

  “Stay with him, Chase One,” came the cool response. “All Killers, this is a go! Secondary units maintain station for reaction as required. Primaries close immediately! All units acknowledge!”

  Bolan was counting the “killers” as each in his proper turn acknowledged the kill order. Good radio discipline, yeah. Military precision, sure. And it was quite a field army that was assembling out here on the Rockies’ eastern slope. By simple extrapolation, a hundred troops minimum—with possibly several times that number in a closer count.

  But Mack Bolan had stopped counting.

  The long jungle night had ended, and the warrior was ready to greet the dawn—at the edge of the world, or at least it seemed that way. He’d picked his spot in the spider’s web, and now he was off the highway and plunging across open country, running along a splayed finger and aiming for a knuckle overlooking and commanding all behind him.

  The edge of the world, sure—but it wasn’t a jungle, and it was just the opposite of dawn. This was “big sky” country, with the snowcapped peaks backdropping the western edge and standing out with stark relief against the red skies of sunset. Off to the east lay green flatlands for as far as the eye could see, and from here the eye could see the median between night and day—the shadow zone way off beyond Denver where the direct sunrays lingered in retreat.

  There would be no retreat here.

  There would be confrontation and death here.

  And Mack Bolan was ready … for both.

  2: DEATH FORCE

  Bolan’s bold initiative had succeeded in maneuvering the enemy into open country where the warwagon’s combat systems would find maximum effectiveness. There were no trees here, no structures—no obstructions and no cover of any type. They would have to come at him along the bare spine of the hill, in a steady climb. Moreover, with nightfall almost upon them, there would be no time for cute stratagems. The darkness would be kinder to the hunted than to the hunters. Behind him stood the beginning of the heavily forested slopes, wild country with dramatic topography and an infinite number of escape routes for a fleeing man.

  Bolan was not fleeing, but the enemy could not be certain of that. If they meant to have him, then the burden was theirs to attack immediately. They would, he knew, do so.

  And he was ready for them. The battle cruiser was heeled about with her bow to the only path of attack. All surveillance systems were operative. The roof-mounted rocket pods were raised, locked, and ready. Personal weapons and ready-belts were placed near the door in readiness for extra-vehicular activities.

  The enemy, also, appeared ready. Their progress along the uneven terrain had been not quite as rapid as Bolan’s and apparently there had been some indecision regarding tactics during those first few moments of Bolan’s crosscountry plunge. But now they had shored up their game plan and the movement had become entirely methodical.

  The heavy crew wagon had proven unfit for this leg of the journey, evidenced by the unhappy complaint via Bolan’s radio monitors: “Command, this is Scout One. We’re out of it. That guy must have some kind of special suspension on that yacht.”

  “Roger, Scout One,” was the crisp command response. “Assume rear plug and stand by for further assignment. Killer One—report!”

  “Killer One, aye. We’re okay. Target is headed for the timber line. He’ll have to dump the vehicle there. We are closing with all speed.”

  “Belay that!” the command voice instantly replied. “Advance with extreme caution only!” Then had followed a flurry of signals for positioning of units and coordination of the attack plan. Bolan counted five “killer” mobile units assembling down there while he finalized his own preparations for the battle—and when they came, it was str
aight out of the military book.

  An apprehensive chill chased along his spine and once again doubt surfaced in the combat mind as the warrior scanned that enemy force through the high resolution focal fields of the optics system. Five vehicles, yeah—army field vehicles, dammit, done up in the traditional OD colors—troop carriers, grinding slowly along that gradual incline in a well-spaced formation, with squads of infantry advancing cautiously behind them, very authentic-looking infantry wearing combat fatigues and carrying very familiar weapons.

  Hell—it could not be!

  Bolan fought himself through an agonizing moment of inner conflict, then he sent his own powerful radio transmitter clicking toward the VHF military channel under monitor. His voice was cold and militarily precise as he spoke into the microphone. “Command Radio, authentication check. Identify your unit and authorization code for use of this radio channel.”

  He counted off ten seconds before the response crackled through his monitor: “Roger, Circuit Control. Colorado Guard, Arapahoe Training Area. Field exercise in progress.”

  “Authenticate!” Bolan snapped.

  “Roger. Stand by.”

  The VHF scanner immediately whirred and locked in to a terse command via that spectrum. “All units from Killer Command. Abandon communications primary—repeat—abandon primary. All further communications via this channel.”

  Bolan grinned soberly, all doubts again dissolved. So it was all a cover. Those were not real troops down there. But they were going to damn soon feel that they were.

  He “enabled” the rocketry, an electronic command which automatically combined the optics with the fire control system, superimposing an electronic grid with rangemarks on the viewscreen.

  The Fire Enable signal began pulsing.

  Targeting was entirely via electronic circuitry, foot-controlled and fired from a floor-mounted device which Bolan described as “a rock and press track/fire.” A supple ankle and steady foot were the chief requirements for this system. The launcher itself was built into the roof of the vehicle—a four-rocket pod which was normally retracted below a sliding roof panel for concealment. It was quickly raised and locked into the firing mode upon command.