“I don’t need a babysitter!” Farris groaned.
“Can it!” Bolan snapped back. “Save your strength!”
Just outside the doorway two rectangular, waist-high redwood planters flanked a small porch. The containers were heavy, but Bolan was able to shift them until they were touching up against each other, creating a V-like barrier that would hopefully shield Farris from any further incoming rounds.
“Stay low and keep pressure on the wound,” he told the cop.
“I know the drill,” Farris snapped. “Now go! Do what you have to!”
Bolan picked up his carbine and peered out past the planters. There was no sign of the enemy, but he could see that Eppard’s friend had been downed near the gristmill where the squad car and ATVs had been parked. The man didn’t appear to be moving, but he was an open target and on the chance he was still alive, Bolan was determined to get him out of the line of fire. Rising to one knee, the Executioner drew in a deep breath and prepared to hurtle himself over the planters, hoping to make it at least as far as Gwen’s station wagon before drawing fire. Before he could make his move, however, he was stopped short by a trembling sensation beneath him. The feeling slowly intensified and soon there there was thunderlike rumbling in the night air around him.
“Earthquake,” Bolan murmured.
“This is New Mexico,” Farris gasped. “We don’t have earthquakes!”
Bolan’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he once again glanced out past the planters, trying to account for the trembling, which continued unabated. As the sound grew louder, Bolan placed it and stared out at the distant cornfield. There he could see the stalks being parted and flattened by what looked to be some dark, approaching flow of lava. By now the gunfire had ceased and there was only the growing rumble, which soon enough distinguished itself as the pounding of hooves. Seconds later, the front wave of the dark force broke clear of the cornfield and Bolan realized it was no single entity, but rather a collective mass of two-ton beasts driven to flight by the sound of gunfire and the explosion of the incendiary grenade. Bison stampede!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cherkow was in disbelief when he saw the first wave of bison emerge through the cornfield. And the beasts weren’t alone. Another of Jeffrey Eppard’s friends had cast aside his sniper rifle and bolted clear of the dry stalks a few steps ahead of the creatures. He had no chance of outrunning them, however, and the man went down and was quickly trampled underhoof as the herd continued its manic charge. The bison were in a tight formation, shoulder to shoulder, racing toward Colt’s house with no sign of slowing. Cherkow was directly in their path. He knew his subgun would be of little use against them and he had doubts the rickety toolshed would provide much in the way of protection were the beasts to barrel into it. Breaking from cover, the Russian bolted toward the house, hoping to reach it before the stampede caught up with him.
As he crossed the grounds, Cherkow saw Bolan leap over the planters and race past the station wagon toward the gristmill. Cherkow fired on the run but his aim was errant and his rounds flew wide, taking out the Volvo’s windshield. The Russian wasn’t about to waste time lining up another shot; the bison were gaining on him. He tossed the weapon aside and lengthened his stride, running like a man possessed toward the window he’d tossed the grenade through. Once he was within a few yards of it, he raised his forearms in front of his face and dived headlong through the opening. There were still shards of glass clinging to the window frame and they drew blood from Cherkow’s forearms as they shattered under his weight.
Cherkow cleared the window and landed hard on the living-room floor. His right shoulder absorbed most of the blow, but his already sore knee struck the tiles as well and added to the searing pain in his rib cage. He groaned and slowly rose to his feet, hacking from the still-lingering smoke as he pulled out his Viking pistol. The thundering of the stampede rattled the house as he staggered across the room like a man half-drunk. He was halfway to the doorway when a shot rang out, and he felt a stabbing sensation in his right hip. Spewing obscenties, the Russian quickly traced the shot to Sergeant Farris, who lay out on the front doorstep where Bolan had left him. Before the tribal officer could get off another shot, Cherkow cut loose with his Viking, stitching Farris across the chest. The gun fell from the sergeant’s hand as he slumped lifelessly to the concrete. Staring past his victim, Cherkow saw a handful of bison abruptly change course and veer away from the planters. Relieved, Cherkow slumped onto the sofa and tore at the bullet hole in his bloodied jeans. It looked as if the slug had passed through cleanly. Still, the man’s entire body now throbbed from the cumulative toll of his wounds.
Grimacing, the Russian hauled himself over the back of the sofa and dropped behind it. From there he figured he’d be in a position to take on any enemy that chose to enter into the house. A part of him hoped the man from the airport would return. Much as he’d earlier wanted to take the man alive for questioning, Cherkow was now in a killing mood, and if the bison didn’t finish the man off the Russian was determined to do the job himself.
ONE OF CECIL FARRIS’S colleagues had been the first victim of Cherkow’s goon squad, struck in the back by a silenced round while staking out the grounds from behind a cord of firewood forty yards from the house. With Eppard’s friends already downed, that left two surviving members of the tactical force Bolan had helped assemble. One of them, tribal police veteran Louis Thon, had managed to take out two of the Russian assailants before the bison had begun their charge through the cornfield. He’d made it as far as one of the large shade trees behind the house before the creatures reached the grounds and began to split off into smaller groups, all of which were still at least thirty strong and rampaging out of control.
With no other cover within reach, Thon circled behind the tree and pressed himself against the rough bark. A group of more than twenty bison charged by, still in mad flight, brushing close enough that their smell clung to the officer even after they’d passed. As they neared the boulder-strewed base of the mountainside behind the house, the creatures slowed momentarily, then began to scatter, some heading left toward the long driveway, others to the right, where within a hundred yards they would find their way blocked by the river. A dozen of the beasts chose a third course, doubling back toward the house and the tree where Thon now stood facing them. The officer was about to circle to the other side when someone called out to him from directly overhead.
“Up here!” shouted Officer James Lynwood, who had fortuitously set up a sniper post in the lower boughs of the tree before all hell had broken loose. He’d already claimed one of Cherkow’s men with his scope-mounted DPMS Panther and had just seen another trampled by the bison while trying to flee down the driveway.
Thon reached up to the hand Lynwood extended his way. They grabbed hold of each other’s wrists and as Lynwood pulled, his counterpart stabbed his boots at the trunk’s bark and half climbed up the side of the tree. Thon reached Lynwood’s side just as the bison charged past.
“This is insane!” Thon muttered.
Lynwood nodded solemnly, staring at the herd. He figured there were at least three hundred of them, of which fewer than twenty had ceased stampeding. “We’ll have to wait for them to run themselves out.”
“Fine with me,” Thon said. “No way am I going back down there and playing matador with them.”
Intent as they were on watching the bison, neither man took notice of movement out on the rocky mountainside behind them. Cherkow’s lone surviving accomplice, Cheslav Abramowicz, had reached the safety of the rocks well before the stampede, but it wasn’t until he saw Thon being hauled up into the tree that he spotted Lynwood’s sniper post. Both officers were partially concealed by the thick boughs branching out from the trunk, but Abramowicz felt he had a clear enough target. Ignoring the commotion of the herd, he calmly drew aim with his PP-2000. The lightweight subgun was far inferior to Lynwood’s Panther as a sniper weapon, but the Russian compensated by strafing his ta
rget with half his 44-round box magazine. Enough of the rounds found flesh to drop both Lynwood and Thon from the tree like pieces of overripe fruit, adding to the already grim body toll.
BOLAN HAD DIVED TO the ground briefly when Cherkow’s errant shots had taken out the Volvo’s windshield. With the bison racing headlong toward him, however, he had no intention of staying down for long. He crawled around the station wagon, then sprang to his feet and charged toward the man lying near the gristmill. The man’s eyes were open, but Bolan could see there was no life in them. There was no time to try to drag the body to safety; several of the bison were already bearing down on him. It was all he could do to veer to one side to avoid being struck head-on. As it was, one of the beasts clipped Bolan’s right thigh with so much force the AR-15 went flying from his grasp as he was propelled backward into the gristmill’s eight-foot-high waterwheel, which rested in the muddy channel where the river would normally be diverted to operate the mill. Colt had taken the wheel off its axle for refurbishing, however, and when Bolan struck it there was enough give for him to realize it was merely propped against the side of the building. Still, he hoped it was wedged securely in the mud because he saw it as his only chance of not falling victim to the stampede. Scrambling as best he could, he used the wheel’s horizontal paddles as ladder rungs and began to climb upward, hoping to reach a point from which he could lift himself onto the mill’s roof.
It wasn’t to be.
Bolan had reached the top of the wheel and was trying to stand up when a two-ton bull, foaming at its bearded muzzle, veered from the herd, trampling Eppard’s slain friend and charging the wheel. The recessed channel forced him to strike at an angle, but the bison’s massive, fur-lined skull carried the force of a wrecking ball and there was a splintering of crushed paddles as the wheel was jarred free of the mud and began to roll clear of the mill. Thrown off balance, Bolan dropped flat against the curvature of the wheel and held on to its sides as it began to carry him backward down the channel toward the river. A few yards along, the wheel abruptly slammed to a stop against the channel lock, throwing Bolan clear. He landed on a muddy embankment, which surged with a noisy fury that drowned out the thundering of the stampede.
By now, the handful of bison detoured by the rock formations behind the house had looped around and were heading back toward Bolan along the side of the river. Fortunately for Bolan they gave the embankment a wide berth, buying him enough time to clear his senses and stagger back to his feet. When the creatures converged upon the waterwheel, several of them joined the bull in butting their heads against the exposed paddles. Bolan welcomed the diversion. To his left, he could see the police cruiser and Yamaha ATVs parked behind the gristmill, next to an open doorway that beckoned as a possible safe haven until the stampede had run its course.
As with his plan to reach the roof, however, the bison, in their frenzy, once again proved the Executioner’s undoing. He had made it only a few yards along the slick embankment before the beasts managed to collectively butt the waterwheel with enough force to roll it over the channel lock. Bolan heard the splintering of more paddles and barely had time to glance up before the wheel teetered to one side and began to tumble into the river. Bolan stood directly in the wheel’s path, and there was no way he could get the necessary footing to move clear.
One second Bolan was bracing himself on the embankment; the next he found himself knocked into the river by the wheel’s weight and momentum. For the second time that evening, an icy New Mexico current seemed destined to claim him as a sacrifice to its unchecked power.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Glorieta, New Mexico
The javelina farm serving as Frederik Mikhaylov’s SVR base was roughly the same size as Alan Orson’s Taos estate and, as with the inventor’s work space, the largest structure on the property—in this case a dilapidated dairy barn dating back to World War I—had been gutted from within and rebuilt to serve a function other than storing hay and providing stalls for livestock. The stalls had been converted to bunk quarters for the Butcher’s minions, and the upper hayloft now served as work space replete with drafting tables, benches, laboratory facilities and an array of machinist’s tools. It was to these elevated quarters that Petenka Tramelik had taken the boxed items Orson had intended to display at the New Military Technologies Expo in Albuquerque.
While Tramelik busied himself with inventorying the plunder, Mikhaylov paced the ground floor near the barn door, watching Hedeon Barad—Vladik Barad’s brother, as well as the mechanic who’d taken care of Mikhaylov’s fleet of luxury cars back at Moscow’s Royal Splendor—carefully peel away taped sheets of paper covering the windows of Orson’s stolen Chevy Silverado. Hedeon had already spray painted the pickup’s formerly white chassis a shade of forest green. Even with the windows and main door cracked open to allow for cross-ventilation, the aerosol fumes still lingered in the air, holding their own with the omnipresent scent of the javelinas. Mikhaylov wandered to the rear of the vehicle and inspected the license plate, which had been lifted from a similar Silverado gathering rust in a Santa Fe salvage yard owned by yet another of Evgenii Danilov’s GHC shadow companies. The plates, front and back, were both well scuffed and dented.
“Well?” Hedeon asked as he peeled away the last strips of paper. “What do you think?”
While impressed by the paint job, Mikhaylov wasn’t the kind of person who lavished praise on subordinates. He looked over the pickup noncommitally then told the other man, “Once the paint dries you’ll need to drive through the hills and get some dirt on it.”
“Of course,” Hedeon responded. “I’ll see to it first thing in the morning.”
“After you’ve done that, drive to Santa Fe and buy a used camper shell for the back,” Mikhaylov went on. “Then stop by a few places and get some decals and bumper stickers. Something innocuous. Don’t put them on until you’re away from the stores you bought them from. Once that’s all taken care of, bring the truck back and drive through the hills some more. I want it to look like it’s gone weeks without being washed.”
“You’ve thought it all through,” Hedeon said.
“It’s what I do,” Mikhaylov responded coldly. “It’s why I’m the one giving the orders and you’re the one following them.”
“I understand.”
“Let me make sure you do,” Mikhaylov said. “Repeat the instructions back to me.”
Hedeon was used to the other man’s condescension. He suppressed his annoyance and obliged Mikhalov. He’d nearly finished when another of the Butcher’s men opened the barn door wider and poked his head in, admitting a cold draft of air.
“The trench is ready,” he reported. “And Ilyin just showed up with the woman and her kid.”
“Perfect timing,” Mikhaylov said. “I’m on my way.”
“He wonders if you’ve heard back from Cherkow.”
Mikhaylov shook his head. “Not yet. Go ahead and open the door wider so I can drive out.”
Parked a few yards behind the Silverado was a small, battery-operated utility cart. Mikhaylov was halfway to the vehicle when Tramelik called down to him from the railing of the converted hayloft.
“As far as I can tell it’s all here,” he said. “And it looks like all the matching specs and schematics are on the flash drives.”
“We’ll get a better idea once Diaz shows up,” Mikhaylov responded, glancing up at the red-haired man. H e was referring to Melido Diaz, a Bolivian scientist and avid roulette player Mikhaylov had come to know during his brief time at the Andean Splendor. Diaz’s credentials weren’t as impressive as Alan Orson’s in terms of dealing with uranium, but he, like Orson, was also an inventor. The hope was that he would be able to help the SVR make use of the plunder from Orson’s laboratory. One thing Mikhaylov knew for certain—he preferred Diaz to the only other likely candidate, Dmitri Vishnevsky, the SVR agent who’d replaced him at the Bolivian casino. Vishnevsky was an intellectual with two Ph.D.s and a high-tech background who’d
made millions for the SVR as a card-counting blackjack player at rival casinos back in Russia. He’d been in the running for the position Mikhaylov now held at Roaming Bison but had been passed over by Danilov, who preferred the Butcher’s harder edge. Mikhaylov hated Vishnevsky’s pretentious elitism, and the two men had often quarreled back at Moscow’s Regal. During one particularly heated argument, the men had come to blows, requiring the intervention of casino security to keep Mikhaylov from beating the other man to a pulp.
“There’s another matter we need to attend to,” Tramelik reminded Mikhaylov.
“Upshaw’s other cell phone? Has Vladik been able to get to the impound yard to look for it?”
“He says they haven’t brought in Upshaw’s car yet, but it looks too well guarded for him to sneak in anyway,” Tramelik said.
“Then what’s the other problem?” Mikhaylov asked. “As if we don’t have enough to worry about.”
“We need to replace the heroin I planted in Taos and then some,” Tramelik said. “We have three dealers with standing orders. Four kilos total.”
“You handle it,” Mikhaylov said as he started up the cart. “I have some damage control to attend to.”
Mikhaylov powered the cart past the Silverado and out of the barn. Jeffrey Eppard’s hijacked Toyota Camry was idling thirty yards away near the main gate to the javelina pen. The car’s headlights were directed toward the pen, illuminating the eyes of a dozen swinish creatures foraging off clumps of mesquite and plant scraps piled in a large heap next to a long, shallow water trough. By the time Mikhaylov reached the vehicle, Zhenya Ilyin had gotten out of the backseat and circled to the other side to open the door for Gwenyth Colt. The woman, like her husband, had been driven to the farm with a stocking cap pulled down over her eyes. There had been no need to bind her by the wrists or ankles; the mere threat of harming young Frankie had made her compliant for the duration of the trip.
Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan) Page 9
