Stand Down

by Don Pendleton

  She didn’t seem convinced, however. “What are you doing here? Who sent you?”

  Putting his wallet away again, Bolan decided to take a gamble by telling her some of the truth. “I was heading back from the West Coast, and just stopped in your town for lunch. I heard about the shooting of your mom and dad, and what I found out didn’t seem to add up—including the fact that no one seemed to know where you were—so I thought I’d check it out a bit. Seeing as I found you hiding in your own house, not with relatives or law enforcement, I’d say something’s definitely going on, right?”

  Kelly’s lower lip trembled when Bolan had mentioned the death of her parents, but she managed to restrain herself, crossing her arms and hugging herself. “You have no clue how much shit I’m in, and probably you, too. I—I know who killed my mom and dad—I saw it happen.”

  Before Bolan could prod her further, he heard a click from below. He eased over to the stairway, but saw no lights come on. Nevertheless, his hunter’s senses told him other people had just entered the house. “We’ve got company. Is there any way to leave the house from this level without being seen?”

  “For me, maybe. I don’t know about you.”

  “Then we’re going out the back way.” Drawing his Beretta again, Bolan scooped up the revolver and slipped it into his pocket.

  Kelly frowned. “I don’t get that back?”

  “You ever shoot at another person before?” Bolan asked.

  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  “Then no, you don’t get it back. Now be quiet and stay behind me.”

  5

  Deputy Rojas Quintanar drove as fast as he could through town with his cruiser’s lights off. The call had come in just as he had gone off shift, an automated message from the silent alarm alerting him that someone was moving around in the Bitterman house.

  He’d wasted no time, calling De Cavallos immediately and letting him know what was going on. The other man’s orders had been straight to the point. “Get that little bitch and bring her to me. I’ll send over a few men, in case she puts up too much of a fight for you.”

  Biting back a retort, Quintanar had simply confirmed his orders and signed off. Next he’d called his brothers, Maximo and Silverio, and had them meet him at the end of the driveway to the Bitterman house.

  By the time he’d gotten there, a black Escalade was also on-site, with three men standing around it. Quintanar grimaced at the sight, already regretting informing the head of Cristobal security about what he’d found. The other sheriff’s cruiser, with the two Quintanar brothers inside, was parked a few yards away. He stopped his car, and all three got out at the same time, Rojas nodding to his brothers, the squat and solid Maximo, and slender and deadly Silverio. Both of the other deputies were carrying night-vision goggles, as well.

  “It’s just one girl—I don’t think we’re gonna need all of this to catch her.”

  One of the hired guns, a rail-thin Mexican dressed in all black with dusty cowboy boots, stared right through him. “Mr. De Cavallos said we are to assist in any way necessary.”

  Quintanar wasn’t about to get into a pissing contest with them, so he simply nodded. “All right, but let us take the lead. Silverio, take these two—” he nodded at the other two gunmen “—and head around the back. Maximo, you and he are coming with me up driveway and through the front door.”

  Maximo reached into the second cruiser, coming back out with an Ithaca Model 37 Stakeout shotgun with a pistol grip. As he racked the slide, he caught Quintanar’s glare and shrugged. “Just in case. After all, the mom almost got the drop on you. Who knows what other surprises they might have around the house?”

  The deputy wished his older brother hadn’t mentioned that in front of the Cristobal men—he didn’t need it getting back to De Cavallos. With a sigh, he waved the others out. “We’ll give you three minutes to circle around, then we’re heading up. Do not kill her—De Cavallos said specifically to take her alive.” He made sure each man heard him and confirmed his order with slight nods. “All right, get going.”

  The three men jogged off into the darkness. Rojas glanced at his watch, counting the seconds. When the allotted time had passed, he nodded toward the home in the distance. “Let’s go.”

  The three men walked up the driveway. Quintanar was glad to see that the Cristobal shooter hadn’t brought anything crazy like a submachine gun. He just carried a matte-black Glock in a belt holster. The deputy hoped the other two men would be just as professional—they didn’t need this turning into any more of a potential public relations disaster than it already was.

  Walking to the door, he produced a key and carefully inserted it into the front door, turning it as softly as he could. The click of the dead bolt unlocking still sounded loud to him.

  “No lights.” Turning on his night-vision monocular, Quintanar eased the door open and slipped inside, followed by his brother and the hired gun.

  BERETTA AT THE READY, Bolan leaned over the banister, searching for any movement. The narrow hallway leading to the family room and the kitchen was a death trap, but so was staying upstairs. With no choice, he turned to Kelly.

  “You’re right behind me, got it? If we can’t get out of the hallway, go back upstairs, and you’re out one of the windows. If I tell you to run, you run, understand?”

  She nodded, and he began creeping down the stairs. The night vision gave him an advantage, but only if the shooters didn’t turn on the lights. He reached the landing without incident and paused, straining his hearing for any movement.

  There! A boot heel clicked against the tile floor in the kitchen. They were already too far inside. He couldn’t reach the back door in the family room without being seen.

  Putting his back against the wall that abutted the hallway, Bolan waited, pressing Kelly against the drywall next to him. The man or men in the other room were good—they moved about with a minimum of signals or noise. But finally, one approached the hallway, paused outside, then peeked his night-vision-equipped head into the landing—and ended up staring into the muzzle of Bolan’s Beretta.

  The Executioner placed the sound suppressor right next to the man’s temple. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Step in here.”

  The gunman stepped through the doorway, the pistol in his hand pointing toward the ceiling. Bolan quickly took it from him. He was dressed in a sheriff’s deputy uniform, which made Kelly gasp when she saw him, recognizing the man a second before Bolan did.

  “He killed my parents—fucking Rojas!”

  She lunged forward, bumping Bolan’s arm, making his pistol waver for a second. The deputy dropped his shoulder and bulled into the soldier, shoving his arm away as he pushed the other man as hard as he could. Instead of trying for the gun, he scrambled up and backed out into the hallway, shouting, “In here! Gun! Gun!”

  “Damn it!” Bolan grabbed the back of Kelly’s shirt and hauled her away from the doorway just as shots lit up the kitchen. Pushing the girl to the floor, he covered her with his own body as drywall erupted under the impact of several bullets.

  “Stop, cease-fire, damn it!” a voice shouted from the other room. “Kelly, this is Deputy Quintanar. I’m here to help you. Tell Mr. Cooper to toss out his weapon and surrender, and we’ll sort all of this out down at the station.”

  “Fuck you—” was all the teenager could get out before Bolan clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Deputy, this is Matt Cooper. I’m a special agent with the Department of Justice.” As he spoke, Bolan pushed Kelly up the stairs, putting a finger to his lips and pointing to the second floor. She took the hint and began crawling up on her hands and knees. “I’m ordering you all to drop your weapons and stand down. Once I’ve ascertained that you pose no further threat, then I’ll let you alone have your sidearm back.”

  As he’d figured, his demand caught the men outside off guard. There was a hurried conference, the men whispering in sibilant Spanish. Bolan’s command of the language was good, but he
was hard-pressed to keep up with the fast conversation, although he heard mierda, Spanish for “shit,” more than once.

  “Wait a minute,” another man asked. “How do we know you’re with Justice? I think this guy’s just playing with us.”

  “I’ll be happy to show you proper identification once I’ve secured all of you to my satisfaction. You can think whatever you want, tough guy, but if you take me out, I guarantee this place will look like the main plaza at Homeland Security headquarters in twenty-four hours. Now drop those guns and raise your hands!”

  Bolan heard more whispering among the men. He knew there was almost no chance of them taking him up on his offer, but hoped the thought of tangling with the U.S. government might make them think twice.

  “All right, Agent Cooper, we want to cooperate fully with the United States government. As a show of good faith, myself, my fellow deputy and the other man out here are going to slide our weapons over to you.”

  Bolan heard the sound of metal on tile and looked down to see the muzzle of a pistol in the entryway. Ducking, he pulled out his fiber-optic camera and extended the small lens around the corner, holding it high to give the illusion that he was still standing. No shots came through the wall. Bolan played the camera around the kitchen, seeing three men, all Hispanic, Quintanar and another one in sheriff’s uniforms, and the third dressed all in black. All of them had their hands in the air. Bolan swiveled the camera down to verify that all three guns were on the floor, then checked out the rest of the dark hallway, but saw no one there. The real problem was what did he do with these three once he had them. One of his inviolate rules was that he didn’t make war on officers of the law, but Kelly said this one had been the man who’d killed her parents, and Bolan couldn’t stand dirty cops. But what if she was wrong?

  “Both deputies, reach down slowly and take out your hand cuffs. Do it now.” He watched as the two removed the metal bracelets from their belts. “The one on the left, cuff your left hand to the deputy’s right, and the middle man do the same for the man next to him.”

  “What? Fuck you, man!” The man in black shouted. “You’re probably the one who killed those people yesterday and have come back to finish the job! I’m not letting myself be cuffed just to get killed!”

  “Goddamn it, shut up!” the first deputy ordered. “I’m afraid we cannot do that, Agent Cooper. We’ve demonstrated our trust in you, now it’s time to show some in return. Come out and let’s talk this over like civilized men.”

  Bolan withdrew the camera and appeared in the doorway just enough to point his Beretta at the middle man, giving him plenty of time to track and shoot the man on either side if necessary. “All right, I’m here. Now—”

  The click from the darkened family room was all the warning Bolan needed. He pushed himself back into the stairway alcove as a shotgun boomed from only a few yards away. The pellets shattered the molding and wall, sending bits of it flying out in a spray that covered the stairs. Fortunately, the shooter had been so close that the pellets hadn’t had time to spread, otherwise some of them might have tagged the soldier.

  Bolan stuck out his Beretta and fired a 3-round burst into the kitchen, then one into the family room. Drawing his pistol back, he leaped up the stairs as fast as he could, hearing the shotgun’s slide rack another shell into the chamber as he tried to put as much distance as he could between himself and the shotgunner. Another boom rocked the house, and more of the alcove below disintegrated as Bolan hit the second-floor landing on his hands and knees.

  “Matt—” Kelly’s voice sounded like it had been cut off, and he heard the sounds of a struggle from the master bedroom. The door was ajar but closed. Bolan decided to use the element of surprise and dropped back to his knees as he pushed the door open. A pistol blazed above his head, its muzzle-flash illuminating the shooter next to an open window on the far wall. Bolan tracked the man with his Beretta, and the weapon sit three rounds into his chest, the bullets pulverizing his breastbone and heart and making the attacker sag against the wall, a smoking gun dropping from dead fingers.

  Hearing a muffled scream from outside, Bolan crab-walked to the wall next to the window and peeked outside without revealing himself, keeping an ear open for any gunmen coming up the stairs after him as well. The curtains were blowing, so he couldn’t get a good look to see if anyone was waiting for him on the other side. Easing the tiny camera on its flexible extension around the corner of the window, the soldier spotted a dark form waiting to cap anyone who stuck his head outside. Bolan stuck his Beretta out the window and fired another 3-round burst, letting the pistol’s recoil track the bullets upward. He heard a surprised grunt, then a groan of pain, followed by a thud as a body hit the roof.

  Turning, he peeked out the window to see a crumpled body on the shingles, a pistol lying next to it. Bolan was climbing out the small window when he heard footsteps pound up the stairs. Drawing the revolver, he pointed it at the door and unloaded four shots. The footsteps stopped abruptly.

  Bolan pocketed the revolver and exited to the roof, stopping only to grab the dead gunman’s pistol. In the distance he saw another man in a deputy’s jacket carrying a kicking, struggling Kelly down the driveway. Trotting to the edge, Bolan holstered his Beretta and placed the other gun on the roof next to him as he started to let himself down.

  “Aquí!” A voice called from the window, and Bolan glanced up to see one of the deputies from the kitchen leveling a pistol at him. Grabbing the gun from the roof, Bolan snap-aimed a shot at him while jumping off the roof. He landed on the lawn, rolling with the impact and coming up in a crouch.

  “He went around the side! Go, go, go!” Voices shouted from inside. Bolan ducked under the eave of the house, waiting to see if the deputy would be careless enough to peek over the side to try to find him. He was. The moon cast his shadow on the lawn, right above Bolan, and he pointed the captured pistol at the roof and fired three shots. There was a strangled yelp, then a loud thud, followed by a scream that split the night.

  Bolan was already running into the darkness, shoulders tensed for those first few seconds as he expected a bullet to come from the house and tear into him, but after he was twenty yards away, he breathed a little easier. He redoubled his speed, trying to catch up with the deputy who taken Kelly. She was the only link he had to her parents’ murder, and he’d be damned if he was going to let these thugs take her.

  The driveway was long, but Bolan flipped down his night vision to see the man shoving Kelly into the back seat of a sheriff’s cruiser, backhanding her across the jaw to take the fight out of her. Bolan gritted his teeth and unlimbered his Beretta, pulling up and taking aim. It was a long shot, but he’d made them before.

  The 9 mm bullet whizzed through the air where the deputy’s head had been just a second before. Drawing his pistol, he scrambled into the car, turning it on as he did so. Bolan shot again, his bullet shattering the side window, but the deputy already had the car in motion. But instead of speeding away, he cranked on the wheel and gunned the engine, sending the heavy vehicle straight at Bolan.

  6

  Bolan flipped up his monocle just in time to avoid being blinded by the cruiser’s headlights. Instead of dodging out of the way, he leveled the Beretta and the captured pistol and unloaded both guns at the grille and front tires of the car, shattering one headlight and making sparks fly off the metal ram bar. At the last second, he dived aside, the car’s rear tires spitting gravel over him as it passed.

  Tossing the other pistol away, Bolan reloaded his Beretta and chambered a round. The shot-up cruiser kept going, but one of its tires suddenly flattened with a bang, and steam started coming out from under the hood as it coasted to a stop. The soldier ran toward it, pistol up as the deputy scrambled out, his own gun raised. Bolan fired high, his bullets shattering the red-and-blue lights on the car’s roof, and forcing the deputy to duck behind the vehicle.

  Reaching the other side, Bolan crouched behind the rear tire, flipped his night vision
back down and glanced underneath, trying to spot the deputy’s feet. Apparently the other man had the same idea, since Bolan couldn’t see him no matter which way he looked. A loud thumping was coming from inside the car. Bolan had just decided to go to the front tire and use the engine as cover when the cruiser’s rear window exploded into hundreds of fragments. The soldier glanced up to see Kelly crawling out of the back window.

  “Stop right there!” the deputy shouted. Kelly slid down the trunk while Bolan stood up and shot through the open back windshield into the glass of the driver’s window, making the deputy dive for cover again.

  “Kelly, over here!” Bolan whispered. The girl scrambled toward him, and as soon as he could reach her, the soldier grabbed her arm and took off into the night. “Run as fast as you can for the ditch!”

  The girl didn’t need any urging, easily keeping up with Bolan and leaping into the dry ditch just as they heard the shotgun slide rack again and a boom erupt from the stalled cruiser.

  “Go go, keep moving!” Bolan heard shouts from the house and the car, and knew the deputy and his men would be pursuing soon. He wished he’d gotten close enough to disable the other cars, but there hadn’t been time.

  “How far are we going?”

  “Just past your property line, then cut left into the field.” A few yards later Kelly popped up out of the ditch into a field of green timothy grass, already knee high. Bolan followed, glancing back on the run. The remaining gunmen were at the other two vehicles. He’d cut the force against them by half, but the remaining three men could easily run them down with the vehicles. Even as he watched, the SUV powered up, keeping its lights off as it pulled into the driveway, cutting across the lawn while the cruiser kept to the road.

  “My car’s about three-quarters of a mile from here, parked down the side road on the other side of your house.” Bolan handed her the keys. “Think you can reach it?”