Colorado Kill-Zone

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan chuckled tiredly into the microphone. “We can do it right now, Captain. I’m on U.S. 40 just south of Blue Base. Feel like trying for all or nothing?”

  The guy laughed back at him. “Thanks, I’ll pick my own battlefields. It’s a shame, hawg. A real cottonpicking shame. Know what our share was? You can’t count that high. Five hundred million. Believe it? We had it proofed and damn near spent. See what you missed? Well, it was my error. Didn’t know you’d grown into such a damned jar head. A few hours ago, hawg, I gave you the opportunity of a lifetime. You could have come in for fifty mil.”

  “I can’t count that high, either, Trooper,” Bolan replied.

  The guy sneered at that. “There’s no idiot like a superhawg. Your friends in New York told me I’d have to take you first. I guess that was my first error. I really didn’t buy that.”

  “You tried it, though.”

  “Sure. To keep peace in the family. It was part of the deal. And I damn near got you, soldier.”

  “Damned near isn’t good enough in this game, Captain. You know that. What was the rest of the deal? You really expected those old men to play with you once they had their hands on all that gold?”

  It was a simple probe into the mechanics of the plot, but it paid.

  The guy laughed it off but told Bolan what he’d wanted to know. “There are checks and balances, even in the super world.” Which simply confirmed, to Bolan’s mind, that the mob had engineered the conspiracy and had planned to sluice the ransom into usable channels—a commissione specialty.

  The radio signal from the chopper was fading rapidly, the distance between the two men ever widening.

  In another sense, too, that distance had never been wider.

  “Sucker!” was the last word from Harrelson in the Colorado kill zone.

  There was a difference, sure. Bolan accepted the sucker tag, and wore it with weary pride.

  Where would the world be, he wondered, when all the “suckers” were gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Time was back inside the frames, where it belonged, and Mack Bolan was enjoying the view.

  The air was crisp and clean, thin but free, and the ski slopes were neatly packed with a fine dry bed of fresh happiness.

  The president was smiling as he slipped past the viewpoint and glided on down the run, flanked by a gallery of admiring onlookers and the ever-present platoons of nervous treasury men.

  Bolan smiled wearily and stepped into the telephone booth. Red Base and White Base might never have existed, for all the evidence they’d left behind. They had vanished, as had the forces that occupied them—and the will o’ the wisp captain of infantry who’d commanded them.

  Some things never vanished, though, thank God. Leo Turrin’s droll voice crowded the connection with a perky, “Juno Two, is this who I hope it is?”

  “The president is enjoying the slope,” Bolan reported. “How are things in crazyland?”

  “Still crazy,” Turrin said, chuckling. “Hal is out beating some stars off of a couple of redfaced generals, but I guess things are pretty well intact. For the moment. By the way—he, uh, killed that regional alert on that Bolan guy. Seems that someone saw the guy down in Mexico or somewhere exotic like that. How, uh, how’s the military picture in Colorado this morning?”

  “Bright and clear,” Bolan said. “I’ve just been hanging around, looking for a cornpone colonel, but I guess the guy is no diehard. He very gracefully withdrew.”

  “He’ll be bouncing back again someday,” Turrin said.

  “I’m sure he will. We’ll have to watch for that, won’t we.”

  The little guy chuckled. “With bated breath. I, uh, I get a note of disappointment from Manhattan but no death wishes. I guess that marriage is still healthy enough. So watch yourself. They’ll be trying again.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah, I’ll be watching the movements. You too, Sticker. Keep the nose twitching.”

  “Oh, sure. Lot of good it did this time.”

  “It saved a president.”

  “The hell it did! We all know what saved the president today, Striker—and so does he.”

  “Hell of a note,” Bolan said sourly. “You should have seen the guy, out there trying to look natural and happy in a wedge of bodyguards. There should be a better way.”

  “You think of it, he’ll buy it,” Turrin said. “After today, the congress may insist on portable bunkers for the guy.”

  “Speaking of buying,” Bolan said.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s a nice lady up here who lost her all in the cause of the night. Tell Hal. The U.S. Government owes the lady a ski resort—and not a second class one, either. I expect to see Snow Trails Lodge rising again, and every bit as good as anything in Vail or Aspen.”

  “Okay. I’ll put in your order. Anything else?”

  “Peace,” Bolan said.

  “Oh yeah, sure.”

  Bolan chuckled and hung up. He returned to the warwagon and headed her north.

  Snow Trails lay north.

  Also a nice lady and a gutsy kid who maybe wouldn’t mind a third hand around for a few days. There was some rebuilding to be done, some trails to ski, and perhaps even a dream or two to be rebuilt.

  Peace, yeah—maybe. For a few days.

  Then back to the kill zones … wherever they may be found.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

  1: Bone Yard

  The range was 700 meters—or a little more than a half mile. The big Weatherby .460 was the natural choice of weapons, blowing a muzzle energy of more than 8,000 foot-pounds to propel a heavy 500-grain bullet along that three-second course.

  At such a range, the impact velocity would fall to something like a thousand feet per second. For this reason, he’d selected a controlled-expansion Nosier partition bullet for sustained penetration during expansion—he was going for bone, not mere flesh—for a sure kill, not a medical challenge.

  This punch needed to be quick, stunning, shaking!—enough so to propel hardened men into panicky reaction—enough to put the fear of judgment into those who’d long thought themselves above any such mortal measurements.

  The one under measure at the moment was smiling into the crosshairs of the high resolution sniperscope, apparently a contented man with nothing on his mind more pressing than the question of which tantalizing woman to lie down with next—or whether to take her beside the pool or in the water in an Acapulco crawl.

  Sure, the guy had it made. That lazy smile which nearly filled the 20-power field of vision told it all. One of the golden ones, a super-macho of the jet set, whiz kid of the world money markets, confidant of the power elite. Yeah, this guy had it made. So big, and so well made, that he’d earned a code name—“Butch Cassidy”—from the feds who’d been trying to nail him all these years. Real name: Bobby Cassiopea. Real occupation: laundryman for dirty money. Real affiliation: Mafia.

  Once written up in a national magazine as “the playboy financier of the Western world,” the guy was a representative sample of the rapidly emerging new look in international hoods—suave, educated, untainted by overt association with known criminals but covertly as savagely rapacious as any street soldier and probably more so. More dangerous, certainly. This type dealt in big misery. And yeah, Bolan knew Bobby Cassiopea. The guy consorted with sheiks and prime ministers, Zurich bankers and Monte Carlo high-rollers, multinational tycoons and movie queens.

  Cassiopea was, in mob language, “a natural.” He was also a nobody, a nonperson in the invisible second government of the world. The mob owned him, body and soul. They’d raised him, educated him, financed him and arranged a “marriage of convenience” with an Italian noblewoman, which provided him social station and worldly visibility. The guy was a walking and talking fabrication, a “dummy” for the wiseguys who sat behind the curtain and pulled his strings.

  But, sure, Cass Baby had it made. There was something essentially sad in that. A ghetto kid kil
ling time on a street corner owned more than this guy did. A made man could never claim his own soul. Not while he lived.

  Bolan shrugged away the thought as the Weatherby swung gently on the tripod and another face moved into focus—this one more at home on a movie or television screen—fiftyish, puffed and lined with the dissipations of a life too eagerly spent, still handsome and probably still capable of producing pitty-pats in a few million female hearts. The one and only John Royal. Bolan knew the gentleman by reputation only, and it was a mixed and questionable bag.

  He sighed and continued to scan. Lou Scapelli and Eduardo Fulgencio, the Central American junkmen, completed the set at poolside—discounting the six bikini-clad decorations scattered about on sunning boards. A servant in white uniform stood unobtrusively at a small bar in the background. A couple of the girls were sucking separate straws and sharing a coco preparado, a local favorite featuring gin in a green coconut. Fulgencio had a beer; the other men were toying with highball glasses.

  Two guys in swim trunks and brightly colored shirts patrolled the beach below the pool area. Another remained with the boat which had brought Scapelli and Fulgencio to the Royal villa for the poolside parley.

  So the range was 700 meters and the stage was set. Bolan grimaced and consulted the trajectory graphs for the Weatherby, then ran a wind calculation.

  It could be a tricky shot. The wind was coming over his right shoulder at about four o’clock, steady at about ten knots. This was on the heights, though. Something of a swirling effect was evident down there at target zone. Marksmanship was a science, sure, but the mathematics could take a guy just so far. Then the principle of uncertainty took over, increasing proportionately to the distance traveled. An error of only one-twelfth minute of angle—at this range and with the uncertain wind situation—could translate into a target error of a foot.

  Bolan could not tolerate that degree of error.

  He wanted headbone. He wanted it surely and methodically.

  Good marksmanship, in the final analysis, becomes a matter of almost supersensory “feel.” A guy took care of his mathematics and worked them to the finest point. Only “feel” or luck could carry across the zone of final uncertainty. And the Executioner could not afford to rely on mere luck.

  He quickly double-checked the ballistics considerations, then went through the target zone choreography. The sound wave would ride in with the bullet, or no more than a step behind. The reaction down there would be immediate and instinctive.

  The marksman projected himself into that target zone and into each target, reading the physical layout and the most likely instinct path for targets two and three.

  So, yeah … allow two seconds for realization, another second for galvanization and full flight to cover.

  Scapelli was small, nervous, quick. He’d take off running—probably heading for the patio wall, twenty paces away. A scared man could cover a lot of ground in three seconds—and that was about all the guy would have. Bolan gave him ten paces, and marked the spot.

  Fulgencio was a heavy, ponderous man. He would opt for lighter cover, closer. The pool. Bolan traced the shortest path and marked the intercept point on that route, then concentrated fully on the windage problem.

  Two clicks adjustment into the wind, and he was ready.

  The Weatherby was ready, with one massive round in the chamber and two more in the magazine. And the target zone was ready.

  The one and only John Royal was not a target—not this time around anyway. He was leaning back in his chair, signaling for the barman. No problem there.

  Cass Baby was semireclining on his chaise longue and smiling at something being told him by Scapelli. Full face front, no likelihood of lateral displacement … target positive.

  The “horse master” himself was bent forward at Cassiopea’s right, feet flat on the ground, talking with a lot of hand motion and really into what he was saying. Target probable for running intercept.

  The Honduran, Fulgencio, was seated crosswise on a sunning board, sucking beer and staring with undisguised interest at the thong-bikinied sunbathers, who were nowhere near the target zone. His expression seemed to be saying: “Let’s get this over with and get the broads over here.” Target positive for scrambling intercept.

  Bolan was in firing prone, at an elevation of several hundred feet above the target zone. From his position, he could view the full sweep of Acapulco Bay and follow the Costera Miguel Aleman, the bay drive, from Gran Via to Guitarron Beach. It was a stunningly scenic panorama—too beautiful, really, for the grisly events unfolding in its midst.

  But, then, there were those cannibals down there, you see …

  Bolan grimaced and sent his mind back to his work.

  The crosshairs took station on the base of Cass Baby’s nose. The superb marksman took a long, measured breath and let half of it out, then sighed an audible “One” as he squeezed into the pull.

  The big piece thundered into the recoil as he grimly rode it at the proper eye relief to get impact verification—reacquiring target on the four-count and just as the 500-grain Nosler reached destination. It smacked in just above the right eye. The rest of that once-handsome head seemed to collapse around that point, the smiling face contorting into a destruct-grimace, the entire field of vision instantly converting to a red froth as Target One disappeared from view.

  Bolan was still counting as the crosshairs swept on, past blurred images of energetic motion. He reached Mark Two on the six-count and squeezed off again, firing at nothing more than a mental mark on a wall—then again quickly working the bolt and tracking on to Mark Three. But then a subliminal quiver of psyche stayed that round; he tracked quickly back along the instinct path and picked up his target.

  Basic miscalculation, yeah.

  The fat man was on all fours, crawling slowly and hesitantly toward the pool, dragging the overturned sunning board along with him. Some cover. A couple inches of expanded plastic or plexiglas.

  Bolan corrected two clicks right, set the crosshairs squarely on target, and let it fly. The big bullet crunched in precisely three numbers later and dead on, punching through the flimsy barricade and finding head at kill velocity.

  The Executioner lifted off the weapon and used the big four-inch spotting scope for target zone evaluation. The still form of Bobby Cassiopea was lying facedown beside an overturned longue. Lou Scapelli lay in a grotesque sprawl near the patio wall, right arm jerking spasmodically, bleeding from the mouth. Sloppy hit. It had caught him in the back, between the shoulder blades. Eduardo Fulgencio had died at mid-crawl and curled into a fetal ball; the top of his head was missing, the brain exposed and leaking.

  John Royal was standing woodenly beside his chair, staring uncomprehendingly down upon the still form at his feet. The barman had come unglued and was beginning to move slowly toward his employer. The girls were just beginning to understand what had happened and were scrambling together for safety.

  The two beach guards were nowhere to be seen. The other guy was apparently in the water, alongside his boat.

  So okay. He’d given them a boneyard to contemplate—and apparently he’d stunned them. Another twenty or thirty seconds and the mood down there would shift into another gear. It remained to be seen whether or not he’d managed to shake anything loose.

  He gathered the expended cartridges and formed a little triangle with them on the ground, then added a marksman’s medal to the design. They’d find it. And they’d know.

  Thirty seconds later, he was stowing his gear in a candy-striped jeep and pitching his mind to the next point of contact.

  Yeah. Very quickly now, they would know that a war had come to Acapulco.

  2: The Rattle

  It was unbelievable … some kind of crazy dream. One moment they’d been having a friendly drink over a casual business meeting. The next moment this! For God’s sake!

  Royal shuddered and scrubbed frantically with a napkin at the spatterings on his own face and arms then took a qu
ick step away from the flow of blood advancing upon his feet from the shattered head of Bobby Cassiopea.

  He dropped the napkin over that unsettling mess and shakily lit a cigarette, trying to collect himself and sending an unblinking gaze across to the huddle of stunned women. He reacted with a start to the sudden appearance of the Mexican barman at his elbow.

  “The gringo is dead, señor?” the barman inquired in a funeral-parlor voice.

  “You better believe it,” Royal grunted, between pulls at the cigarette. “Take the ladies inside, will you, Jorge? But keep them here. Don’t let anybody leave.”

  The head of one of the beach guards appeared at the wall as the barman moved woodenly across the patio. The guard’s eyes did a double take on the human litter scattered there.

  “You okay, Mr. Royal?”

  “Yeah. I guess so. Would you look at this mess? Would you look at it?”

  The guard was looking at it, all right.

  Mere seconds had elapsed since Cass’s head had disintegrated right before John Royal’s eyes. He had not even seen the hits on the other two.

  Crazy, yeah. Unbelievable. Incredible. It didn’t happen this way, did it? Not in real life.

  The barman was herding the girls into the house.

  Both security men were now scrambling over the patio wall from the beach and moving warily toward the victims.

  Incredible!

  “This one’s alive, Mr. Royal … but just.”

  The guy was crouched over Scapelli. The actor winced at that news. It was easier to accept a dead gangster on his patio than a grievously wounded one.

  “This one’s gone,” was the other report. “Brains and all.”

  Cut and print. It’s a wrap.

  Why not? Wasn’t that the way it was usually done? Then the victims got up and had a chummy drink with their assassins.

  It’s not a movie set, JR. You can’t wrap this one.