Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan)

by Pendleton, Don

  There was a second reason for Mikhaylov venturing this far from his duties at the casino, and it was the other matter the Russian chose to first deal with once he’d entered the modest five-room farmhouse that served as a base of operations for more than two dozen lower-tier SVR agents charged with dealings that fell beyond the scope of debt-collecting at the casino.

  After confirming that Colt was still alive, Mikhaylov briefly chastised Viktor Cherkow and the other three SVR agents for having caused so much disruption in the course of abducting the security officer. Afterward he sent them to prepare for their next assignment, raiding Colt’s house to look for the evidence he’d collected against GHC. Once he and Tramelik were alone Mikhaylov told his red-haired colleague, “I hope you managed things a little better on your end.”

  “Everything went smoothly,” Tramelik replied. “Upshaw and Orson are both dead, and it’ll be pinned on Upshaw’s kid. We took care of him, too. Vladik stayed behind to monitor things and keep an eye on the safe house.”

  “What about Upshaw’s cell phone?”

  “I got that, too,” Tramelik reported, “but there’s only one call between him and Colt and that was two weeks ago, before we visited him.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Mikhaylov said. “You said Colt called him while he was in his car just this morning.”

  “I know,” Tremalik said. “He must have deleted the call afterward.”

  “I’m not so sure,” the other Russian said. “Ilyin took Colt’s cell phone right after they grabbed him at the airport, and the only call to Upshaw was the same one from two weeks ago.”

  Tramelik frowned. There seemed only one likely explanation. “They must’ve each gotten separate phones for when they called each other.”

  “Smart move if that’s what they did,” Mikhaylov said. “Upshaw didn’t have a second phone on him?”

  Tramelik shook his head. “It’s not like I had time to search through the whole car,” he said. “Besides, when I found the one phone I figured it was the one we were looking for.”

  “You’ll need to get back to Barad and have him sniff around a little more,” Mikhaylov said. “If Colt and Upshaw were exchanging text messages or attachments, that other phone might have the proof we’re looking for.”

  “The car will end up at the police impound yard,” Tramelik said. “If they haven’t gone through it, maybe Barad can beat them to it.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Mikhaylov said. “And when Cherkow gets to Colt’s place he’ll need to look for his other phone, too.”

  “What if Colt kept it in his car?” Tramelik suggested. “We should probably try to get to the impound yard in Albuquerque, too.”

  “Let’s wait and see what Cherkow can come up with,” Mikhaylov said. “Now back to Orson. Did you get hold of his inventions?”

  Tramelik gestured at the cardboard boxes on the nearby sofa. “We obviously couldn’t get to his helicopter, but we took everything from his workshop except his computer.”

  “Why not the computer?” Mikhaylov asked. “There had to be something we could use on it.”

  “I got all that.” Tramelik fished through his pocket and withdrew a key chain loaded with pinky-size flash drives. “I copied everything off the hard drive. I left the computer because I used it to make sure the kid gets blamed.”

  Mikhaylov’s radar went up immediately. “You didn’t plant the heroin?”

  “Yes, along with the kit and syringe, but—”

  “The plan was to make it look like he stole the inventions to buy smack,” Mikhaylov reminded the other man. “You were supposed to shoot him up so everyone would think he went off on a rampage.”

  “That’s still the way it’ll look,” Tramelik insisted. “I just figured it’d be better to underline everything in case the police there are idiots.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  “Let’s go to the barn,” Tramelik said. “I’ll show you on the computer there.”

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL him about the map?” Ivan Nesterov asked Viktar Cherkow as the two men headed past a large, walk-in freezer resting next to the barn and made their way to a small outbuilding twenty yards past the farmhouse. The building had once seen use as a milk shed but the SVR operatives had turned most of the structure into a makeshift weapons depot.

  “Tell him it got left behind in the truck?” Cherkow snapped at the wheelman who’d driven the stolen vehicle they’d used to abduct Franklin Colt. “After the way he chewed us out? Are you crazy? He’d probably shoot us!”

  “Good point,” Nesterov conceded, unlocking the door to the shed.

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Cherkow said. “Besides, we already know where we’re going. We don’t need a map!”

  The men entered the shed, where a shelving unit lined the far wall, stocked top to bottom with an assortment of weapons and ammunition.

  “I’m just concerned the police might find it and figure out what we’re up to,” Nesterov said.

  “They don’t have jurisdiction on the reservation,” Cherkow reminded his colleague. “By the time they go through all the red tape to get the tribal police involved, we’ll have been there and left already.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nesterov said.

  Cherkow detected the other man’s skepticism and gestured at the weapons cache. “Look, if you’re worried we can just load up more firepower and bring along a few more men.”

  “I think that’d be a good idea.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” Cherkow said. He grabbed a wheelbarrow next to the shelving unit and began to fill it with firearms and grenades. “I’ll take care of this. Go round up some more men and get the chopper started. If anybody gets in our way at Colt’s place, they won’t know what hit them.”

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “BARBARA,” AARON “THE BEAR” Kurtzman said as Barbara Price strode into the Computer Room, “what’s Striker’s status?”

  Striker was Mack Bolan’s in-house handle.

  “He’s on his way to check on this Franklin Colt’s wife,” she replied.

  “Sounds like he and the boys had a close call in that flood channel.”

  Price nodded. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “I hear you.” Kurtzman shook his head wearily. “Two cops dead along with a civilian. And we still don’t know about Colt. Or this Orson guy, for that matter.”

  “Let’s hope the crews come up with something,” Price said.

  Inside the large dimly lit chamber, Kurtzman’s three associates were seated at their respective workstations, eyes fixed on their computer screens as they diligently combed through cyberspace for data that would allow them to lend support to Stony Man field teams. The older two—former FBI agent Carmen Delahunt and one-time Berkeley cybernetics professor Huntington Wethers—were so engrossed in their tasks they didn’t realize Price had entered the room. Akira Tokaido, a young computer hacker extraordinaire, glanced up from his keyboard, however, and nodded a greeting as he dislodged the earbud trailing down to his ever-running MP3 player.

  “Orson’s still MIA,” he reported, “but I cobbled together a little more background on him so we can at least have a better idea who we’re dealing with.”

  “Fire away.” Kurtzman eased into his workstation and set down his mug. There were other seats available throughout the large room but Price remained standing, preferring to pace off some of her nervous energy.

  “Orson came out of Stanford with a Ph.D. in geophysics and tried his hand at think tanks for a few years,” Tokaido reported, glancing at the work file he’d cobbled together on his computer screen. “He tinkered with inventions on the side and registered a handful of minor patents, but nothing caught on. About four years ago he switched gears and signed on with an R & D outfit based out of Chicago. Must’ve been the jump start he needed because after a couple years he went freelance and wound up getting the Defense Department to cough up big-time for a couple of his inventi
ons involving depleted uranium.”

  “Like the tank armor,” Price interjected.

  “That was the biggie all right,” Tokaido said, “but there were a couple others, and he’s got a booth at that expo in Albuquerque and is supposed to be showing off a new batch of gizmos.”

  “Provided he shows up,” Kurtzman said. “What’s he been working on?”

  Tokaido scrolled down his screen. “I don’t have a lot of details, but among other things he’s taken the armor thing a little further and adapted it for battle gear.”

  “Some new generation flak jacket?” Kurtzman asked.

  “That’d be my guess,” Tokaido said. “If it takes after the tank armor, we’re talking something lighter but stronger with some kind of embedded solar capacity.”

  “Sounds like something out of one of those superhero movies,” Price commented.

  “Sure does,” Tokaido said. “Anyway, along with that he’s built a prototype high-speed armored helicopter and is doing some kind of work with redox batteries.”

  “Redox?”

  Tokaido nodded. “I think it’s another uranium application. Something about a backup power source.”

  Kurtzman mulled over the information as he took another sip of his coffee. “Cowboy’s right. That flak jacket sounds like something we could make use of. Maybe the chopper and battery, too.”

  “Hold the fort, gang,” Carmen Delahunt suddenly called out.

  “You got something?” Kurtzman said.

  Delahunt ran a hand through her red hair as she glanced up from her computer screen.

  “I’ve been running Orson’s name through the search engines and came across his blog,” she told the others. “Check out his last entry. Monitor three.”

  Delahunt moved her cursor and moments later her computer-screen image was duplicated on one of the large flat-screen monitors mounted to the east wall. Kurtzman and the others turned their attention to the display and Price wandered toward the wall for a closer look.

  Orson’s blog page featured his photograph along with a series of entries logged over the past week. Delahunt had highlighted one entered a few hours earlier.

  I’ve been betrayed! the post read. I just came back from running errands and my workshop’s been cleaned out. Everything! My life’s work! Gone! It could only be one person. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and a chance at a new life, and this is how he repays me? By playing me for a fool? A word to the wise out there: never trust a drug addict, no matter how clean they claim to be.

  “Whoa,” Tokaido muttered once he’d read the dispatch.

  “This would certainly explain why he didn’t show up at the airport,” Huntington Wethers said.

  “Maybe,” Kurtzman replied, his brow furrowed. “Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Kurtzman said. “Something about it doesn’t smell right.”

  “I skimmed a few of the earlier blogs,” Delahunt said. “If it’s the ranting that throws you, he’s gone off a few other times about other things.”

  Kurtzman shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s that. It all just seems a little too pat. And I’m not just talking about why the guy felt he had to go blabbing to the world about this. Me? Something like that happens, I’d skip the ‘press conference’ and just take care of business.”

  “I’m thinking the same thing,” Price said. She turned to Delahunt and Tokaido. “Is there anything in either the blogs or background check that could give us an idea who this drug addict might be?”

  “Nothing in the background,” Tokaido said, “but I’ll go back over everything.”

  “I don’t think you need to bother,” Delahunt said. “There’s mention in some of the earlier blogs about him taking in one of the tribal members. The son of the guy who runs the pueblo as a matter of fact. He’s got him living in a guest house on the property and doing work on the grounds to help pay his rent.”

  “There’s opportunity,” Kurtzman said. “What about motive? Does this groundskeeper have a drug record?”

  “Affirmative,” Delahunt replied, glancing back over the data. “His name’s Donny Upshaw. According to the blogs, he’s cleaned up his act but used to have problems with alcohol and did some time for heroin possession.”

  “It looks like he might’ve had a relapse,” Tokaido observed.

  “It would appear that way,” Price conceded. “Still, I’m with Bear. There’s something a little off-kilter.” She flipped through a few pages of notes on her clipboard then glanced back up at the screen. “I think I found it. Take another look at the entry time for the blog.”

  “What about it?” Delahunt said.

  “When Striker checked in after that whole chase incident,” Price explained, “he said Colt had spoken with Orson on the phone at around the same time as this posting. Orson had said he was just packing up the things he was going to bring to the expo.”

  “Which would mean he still had the stuff,” Delahunt said.

  “Exactly,” Price said. “There wasn’t time for him to have run any errands and come back to find the stuff missing.”

  “Not to mention the fact that he told Colt he was heading out right after he got off the phone,” Kurtzman added.

  “Maybe Colt had the time wrong,” Wethers suggested. “Maybe the call was earlier.”

  “It’ll be easy enough to check Colt’s phone records,” Kurtzman said. “Somebody want to take it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Tokaido said.

  “Let’s touch base with Taos, too,” Price suggested. “Striker said something about the authorities up there heading out to Orson’s place. Hopefully they’re already there and’ll be able to shed some light on this.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rosqui Pueblo, New Mexico

  Franklin Colt lived in a remote corner of Rosqui Pueblo, far removed from the casino and the new housing development paid for largely out of proceeds from the gambling resort. His modest, four-room adobe home sat on a small knoll at the base of Mt. McCray, overlooking a fourteen-acre parcel comprised of rolling hills surrounding a wide meadow bisected by a deep, moutain-fed river. The river powered the gristmill Colt used to mash corn harvested from a large field that bordered grazing land for the four hundred roaming bison after which the resort had been named. It had been a good harvest, but Colt had yet to clear the field and endless rows of dry stalks rustled faintly in the cold night air, some sagging under the weight of the earlier rain. A mile-long gravel driveway wound from the house to the service road Colt took each day for his commute to the casino. Four vehicles had traveled up the driveway twenty minutes earlier and were now parked in front of the house next to Colt’s other car, a weather-beaten Volvo station wagon half as old as his impounded ’69 Nova.

  One of the vehicles was a well-traveled 1993 Toyota Camry owned by Jeffrey Eppard, a Gulf War veteran who lived three miles away but was the Colts’ closest neighbor. Colt’s wife had called Eppard immediately after speaking with David Lowe, and the vet had arrived soon after along with his nephew and two close friends from the reservation, safeguarding the woman and her two-year-old son while awaiting backup. The other vehicles were clearly marked as belonging to the Rosqui Pueblo Police Department.

  Mack Bolan stood alongside the Camry, holding open one of the rear doors while Colt’s wife leaned in and secured the car seat holding her dozing young son, Frankie. Gwenyth Colt was an attractive woman in her early thirties, her large brown eyes red from tears.

  “I’m sorry it has to be like this,” Bolan told the woman once she slid into the seat next to her son.

  “I understand.” Gwen drew in a breath and looked up at the Executioner. “It’s only temporary. Until Franklin is freed.” Bolan nodded.

  “Why did they do this?” Gwen wondered. “We’re not rich. What kind of ransom could they be looking for?”

  “We don’t know their motives at this point,” Bolan admitted. He was reluctant to question Gwen further regarding h
er husband, but given the circumstances he felt it necessary. “You’re certain he never mentioned anything abnormal going on at the casino or elsewhere around the reservation?”

  “Positive. He doesn’t like to talk about work. The only thing he’s ever told me is how he hates watching people throw their money away gambling.”

  “He plays some poker himself, though, right?”

  “A couple times a month with some friends,” Gwen confessed. “There was a game just last night, actually. There’s not a lot of money involved. For Franklin it was always more about socializing.”

  Bolan could sense that Gwen was telling the truth, at least what she saw it to be. He couldn’t help wondering, however, if there might be something more to Colt’s gambling, especially to the extent that it involved Alan Orson, who, according to Kissinger’s latest update, still had yet to check into his hotel room back in Albuquerque. That the men played cards together and were now both missing after a game the previous night was something that, lacking any other leads, needed to be considered as something more than mere coincidence.

  Gwen took Bolan’s momentary silence the wrong way and fought back a fresh flow of tears.

  “My husband’s still alive, isn’t he?” she whispered. “You’d tell me if he wasn’t, right?”

  “We’re all hoping for the best,” Bolan answered tactfully.

  “But you don’t know,” Gwen said flatly. “He could already be…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “We’re doing all we can,” Bolan told her. “Take care of your son and try to keep your hopes up.”

  Gwen tightened her lips and nodded, then turned and busied herself bundling a small blanket around her dozing son. Bolan looked toward the front seat, where Jeffrey Eppard had already started the engine and was waiting to pull out. Beside him sat his nephew Leeland. The other two men he’d driven to the property would be staying behind to assist Bolan and the tribal police in their stakeout.