Colorado Kill-Zone

by Don Pendleton

  “I’m Joe Carson, CSP,” he told the startled patrolman. “Think I’ve found our man. Let’s get some help.”

  The guy had the mike to his mouth and was sending the word when Bolan slid into the vehicle, beside him. The patrolman was young, probably a green kid, and Bolan hated to do it to the guy, but he had to play them as he found them. “Second floor, front,” he added to the report. “There’s a rear exit and roof access.”

  The young cop nodded with understanding and passed that info along, also. True to Bolan’s expectations, the report was going down on a tactical net, not to the regular police dispatcher—and Bolan knew who, beside the police, would be monitoring that net.

  The invisible ones, that’s who.

  He meant to make them visible … and he did.

  A cleaners truck lurched around the corner at the next intersection north and immediately nosed into the curb. To the rear, a bread truck hove into view and took up the holding position south.

  The young cop at Bolan’s left hand told him, “They’re ringing it in”—an explanation of the coded commands issuing from the police radio. “Did you actually see the guy?”

  Bolan replied, “Yeah, I think so.”

  The police would not be the only ones “ringing it in.” The Houdinis would be moving in force, also, responding to that alert and taking up positions along every possible escape route.

  “Take me to the corner stake-out,” Bolan requested.

  “Which one is that?”

  “See the cleaning truck?”

  “That’s it? Okay.” The cop put the car in gear and eased into the traffic flow. “Say your name is Carson?”

  Bolan nodded. “Stay with your vehicle. Drop me at the corner and circle back. Take position where you were, and don’t make a move until the cavalry arrives.”

  “You think I’m stupid or something?” the youngster inquired, rolling his eyes to emphasize the response.

  Bolan stepped out of the vehicle, then leaned back inside to say, “Thanks. Play it close, now.”

  The kid replied, “Yes, sir,” and went on.

  The uniformed driver of the cleaning truck had noted the arrival, giving him a quick shift of the eyes and then ignoring him.

  Bolan crossed over through the light traffic flow, walked around the rear of the vehicle, opened the loading door at the side, and stepped in. A couple of dresses and a pair of slacks hung from an overhead rack, in plastic bags. A portable radio and a shotgun lay there just inside the door. The guy at the wheel was scowling back at him with a mixture of puzzlement and apprehension.

  Bolan said, “It’s paydirt, soldier. You can look happier than that.”

  The guy broke into a grin. “Hell, I thought you were a cop,” he replied.

  “Come back here,” Bolan commanded. “Let’s check our signals.”

  “No time, sir. The cops are wheeling. As slick as our bird is, you know he’s not going to just sit there and let them come. He’s probably already looking for a path through that circle of steel.”

  “Are we set?”

  “Yes, sir. All units are on the line.”

  The guy was a forward scout, nothing more. In the game plan which Bolan understood so well, his job was to watch and report movements. The main force would take care of the actual contact work, at a time and place of their choosing.

  “Is the chopper in the air?” Bolan inquired casually.

  “Yes, sir. I just heard them reporting in over Red Rocks, heading this way.”

  The cincher, sure. They wouldn’t try it again without the chopper.

  The police were moving in cautiously, sealing off the street, deploying fire teams, invading the buildings to either side of the target building. The whole thing was moving very smoothly—and almost entirely to Bolan’s own timetable.

  He told the Houdini, “Watch it closely,” and returned to the sidewalk. A moment later he was around the corner and moving purposefully along the side street—and one block east, he encountered the second scout line.

  There were two of them, seated stiffly in a late model Ford sedan. They were not the law and they were not the mob. For all their civilian look, they were military scouts, and Bolan wasted neither time nor words on these two. He wanted their vehicle, with its radio and possible other intelligence. He leaned in with the silent Beretta and gave each a quick pop between the eyes before either could react to the situation or even assess it.

  War, yeah, was hell—but Bolan hadn’t invented the game and it was not possible, at this stage, to write in special accommodations for the self-invited intruders into this very private war. Mercenaries—they’d become the worst kind of enemy.

  The hi-shock Parabellums took them quick if not so clean. Bolan dumped the bodies into the street and took charge of the vehicle, swinging about in a sedate U-turn and continuing eastward in a methodical withdrawal.

  The alarm went down almost immediately, the radio in the captured car squawking: “Scout Five is off station! Scout Five! Report!” And, a moment later: “It’s a flush! He’s rolling east in Scout Five! All units—belay that, belay it. Possible diversion. Primary units remain on station! Secondary units will close on Scout Five! Communications Plan Two!”

  That channel immediately went dead and there was no time for Bolan to search for the “Plan Two” channel. Two units were already upon him—one coming up strong on his rear, another fishtailing into the intersection just ahead and trying to block the escape route. The smallest delay, now, would be catastrophic. He tromped the accelerator and swung the wheel, careening around that imperfect plug with two wheels on the sidewalk at the same instant that the four occupants of the plug vehicle were scrambling clear of what must have seemed an inevitable collision.

  Unfortunately, for them, two of the scramblers found themselves in the wrong place and time. Bolan’s plunging vehicle caught them squarely in mid stride, sending one hurtling off into the brick wall of a building and the other rolling across the street in the opposite direction.

  Fortunately, for Bolan, the other two were too caught up in the scramble for survival to have time or inclination for any sort of offensive action.

  He was through and powering into the turn at the intersection when the tail car tried the same maneuver without finding the same degree of success. It was a lighter vehicle and did not fare quite so well at the curb. The driver lost control at that point and the vehicle momentarily wallowed then kneeled left and plunged off in an arcing path toward the plug car then tilted onto its side and completed the final few yards in a grinding slide to eternity.

  Bolan heard the impact of the collision and experienced the flash in his mirror as spilled gasoline ignited and whoofed into a towering explosion. He could not have played it better if that had been his intent—which, of course, it was not—and he was not a guy to take lightly a special favor from the universe.

  That hellish chaos back there would very probably be enough to spring him from the closing jaws of Saturation Baker.

  He was betting on it, anyway, and setting his sights for the high country. He was not retreating now, but searching for an angle of attack.

  A “terrified lady” who operated a small winter resort in the very lap of the enemy stronghold just could be the one to provide that angle.

  Bolan meant to find out.

  Even if, in the end, the universe picked up all the marbles.

  11: WINTER HEAT

  He stuck to secondary roads and navigated by the gut, often driving five miles to realize one true mile toward his goal, avoiding the obvious danger points and ever mindful of the unusual activity in the air overhead. At one point he spotted three helicopters converging in a systematic search pattern at low level while a spotter plane circled high above them.

  It was at this point that Bolan took brief sanctuary in a thick stand of trees and undertook an examination of the captured enemy vehicle. It was actually a command vehicle, this fact evidenced by the ultra-sophisticated communications gear which
it carried—a powerful set combining UHF and VHF capabilities with pushbutton channel selection. He found sectored topographical maps and communication codes, recognition signals, utilization plans, and various other items of useful intelligence. There was also a “familiarization packet”—physical description and composite sketches of Bolan, a rather detailed biography and a resumé of his war through the campaign in Canada coupled with an “M.O. Profile.”

  The whole thing bespoke a determined effort by professionals who knew precisely what they were doing and how to do it. They apparently had the resources, also, to make it work. Bolan’s job would be to make it work against them, if that were possible.

  The radio proved to be a big step in that direction. The enemy knew, of course, that Bolan had possession of one of their command cars and therefore full communications access. There was no way, however, that they could change their communications gameplan short of a complete refitting of all their vehicles. Obviously they could not do this at such a critical point. They could only play the game they had, with all possible pressure, hoping to force their quarry to abandon the vehicle or—at the least—keep him too busy to discover its secrets. That failing, they could only pursue to their best ability and hope for the best. Obviously they were doing so.

  Bolan found their air search on a UHF channel and the ground game on VHF. He waited until the air search began moving east and south then resumed his northwesterly advance,. carefully picking his way past the picket lines on the ground. The morning was all but gone, the air again crisply thin, and the radio signals a faint blur in the background of his consciousness when he emerged high above it all, on Highway 72, and made a quick run into his base camp near Peaceful Valley.

  The campground was nearly deserted when Bolan pulled in behind the warwagon. Two trailers and a pickup-camper were all that remained, and these seemed to be preparing for departure. He was covering the captured car with a tarp and casually studying the two long-haired men in the pickup as it slowly drew abreast of his campsite.

  The pickup halted beside him as the youth behind the wheel lowered his window, smiled, and said, “Peace.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Bolan replied, smiling back.

  “You must’ve come in late. That’s a nice camper you got there.”

  “Thanks,” Bolan said. “Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”

  “Did you get the flash?”

  “The what?”

  “The weather warning. Winter storm coming. They say it dropped two feet of wet snow last night over in Utah. Coming this way, man.”

  Bolan glanced at the sky. “Guess it’s about that time, isn’t it,” he commented.

  “Never know, in these parts,” the longhair replied amiably. “Uh, I noticed your license plate. In case you don’t know, it can get pretty mean up here in a snowstorm. You could get isolated for days.”

  “Thanks,” Bolan said. “I’m pulling out.”

  “You got some kind of ground on that camper—know that? I came over awhile ago to tell you about the storm. I just touched the damn thing and got a shock.”

  “Sorry. I’ll check it out.”

  The kid smiled and sent the pickup on its way.

  Bolan knew all about that “ground,” thanks. It was part of the warwagon’s security system—not hot enough to harm even a small child but enough to discourage casual snoopers. Certain critical points would impart a charge sufficient to dishearten the most determined break-in attempts. He deactivated the system and transferred the useful contents of the car to the warwagon, then secured the tarp and installed a towbar. The remaining two campers had departed when he completed the hook-up, leaving him in much-desired seclusion and affording the opportunity for a much-needed camouflage job. He put a new license plate on the Ford, matching the Louisiana plates being displayed on the van, then removed the wheel covers and sailed them into the woods.

  Next, he went to work on the van’s reversible side panels, altering the color scheme and completing the transformation with magnetic decals suggestive of the huntsman who had been everywhere and bagged everything.

  The total job required less than twenty minutes, and while there was no way of completely submerging such a vehicle, the new look would at least partially confuse identification in an area where campers of every description were in profusion.

  Bolan was satisfied with the new look.

  He went inside and prepared a quick meal while programming his own communications capability to match the enemy’s, then he went aft with the food and unconsciously devoured it while integrating the new intelligence info into the master data bank. This completed, he punched into the mobile telephone network and triggered a “collection” from an automated answering service in Kansas City. Two coded contacts were in that collection—one from Leo Turrin, timed in at ten o’clock that morning, another from an unidentified source in Las Vegas.

  He returned Leo’s call first, running through the elaborate sequence required to get the guy on a no-danger line, and the big-little man from Pittsfield was all in a lather when the contact finally jelled.

  “Listen, I’ve been busy as hell all morning. What’s your present situation?”

  “High and dry, for the moment,” Bolan assured him. “What do you have, Leo?”

  “I can’t believe what I have, Sarge. I’m still trying to sift it out. No facts now—I don’t have any facts—Hal won’t even talk to me and the old men in New York have gone into deep freeze. But, Sarge, take off the cuffs. They’re trying to suck you, pure and simple. Scratch what I said about military input. It’s purely a mob operation. The military part is just a disguise. They’re the same kind of military that you are. But, hell, they’ve got—they’ve got …”

  “I know, Leo,” Bolan said. “Don’t worry about it. I’m onto them. What I’d like from you is—”

  “Sarge, wait a minute! Hear me out, first. Listen, this is something really big. Much bigger than it looks on the surface. The way it comes together from the odors I’ve been getting this morning, this move on you is nothing but a proof mission.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “A warmup. Look, the ice is broken now. People close to the old men are starting to sigh and grin. They’re nodding their heads and saying yeah, yeah—if we can do this to Bolan then we can do it to the other guy.”

  “What other guy, Leo?”

  “There’s the deep freeze, Sarge. I just don’t know. But it’s something damned big, you can believe that. And listen, when did you last talk to Hal?”

  “Then you don’t know the other side, either. Hal won’t talk to me, but I have my sources down there in never-never land. Hal is onto something, and that whole town could blow sky high if he’s tracking true.”

  “What’s he tracking?”

  “Something to make the past disturbances in that town insignificant in the comparison. I have only the rumbles, Sarge, but it’s something to do with the Pentagon and a big-shot general who, it seems, is in the mob’s pocket.”

  Bolan lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the transmitter.

  “Sarge?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. When you put it all together, Leo, what do you have?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I just don’t know. But it makes me sick at my stomach, Sarge. You know? My gut has put it together but it hasn’t yet reached my head. And listen, just before I took this walk, the word came down that they were laying all over you in Denver, had you pinned down and unable to move. True?”

  Bolan chuckled drily. “Not true, Leo. I’m glad they think so, though.”

  The little guy laughed nervously as he replied, “Well, okay, I’m happy to hear the other side of that. Uh, I guess that’s all I have for now. Why don’t we meet here again in exactly two hours.”

  Bolan punched a timer on his console. “Okay. That’s a date. Thanks, Leo.”

  “You’re going to have to stop that movement out there, you know. We can’t rely on Hal and the smothered bureaucrats. If this thing
really materializes into a head-rolling scandal—well, there are heads and there are heads. Hal’s could be the one to roll.”

  “Yeah,” Bolan replied quietly.

  “So it’s your baby, start to finish.”

  “A few hours ago,” Bolan observed, “you were yelling at me to cut and run.”

  “That was a few hours ago. This is now. You have to take them out, Sarge. If you don’t, God only knows what their next round will be.”

  “You feel that strongly about it?”

  “I do. Say the word and I’ll join you. I can get a flight in thirty minutes—be out there by sundown, your time.”

  Bolan pondered the offer for a brief moment before replying, “Thanks, Leo, no. I’d rather have you where you are. Keep digging, huh?”

  “Will do. Stay hard, man.”

  “You know it,” Bolan said, and rung off.

  He thoughtfully smoked the cigarette down to his fingers then put it out and made the Las Vegas call.

  A perky female voice responded to the first ring. “Able Group.”

  “Give me another number,” Bolan told it, without preamble.

  She did so, in that same perky tone, then added, “Give it a minute.”

  He killed the connection, waited a minute, then made the call to that “other number,” a pay phone, he hoped.

  It was. She said, “Mack, oh honey, it’s so good to hear your voice. It’s okay, I’m in a phone booth on Fremont Street.”

  It was Toni Blancanales, the Pol’s kid sister—now an equal partner with Death Squad survivors Schwarz and Blancanales in an electronic detection agency called Able Group.

  Bolan was grinning as he told her, “Great to hear yours, too, Toni. I’m in the light, though, so let’s make it short and sweet.”

  “Short, fine,” she replied with a wry twist to her words, “sweet, I don’t know so much. Do you know a man by the name of Harrelson?”

  Bolan’s grin vanished. He replied, “Maybe. Why?”

  “The word is out, urgent and pleading, that he wants a meet with you. It’s supposed to be life or death—yours.”