Stand Down

by Don Pendleton

  “Yeah, but what about you?”

  “I’m going to divert them so you can get away. Stay hidden until I draw them off. Once you’re gone, head for the Miracle Mile Motel, park in back and wait for me in the car. Got it?”

  Kelly nodded. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to split up—”

  “We don’t have a choice. Get to the other side of that hill, then run as fast as you can. Go!”

  Bolan stood, presenting a clear target as he ran in the opposite direction. As he’d hoped, the SUV shot toward him immediately, its engine roaring. Bolan ran as hard as he could, trying to find any sort of cover to duck behind. Unfortunately, he had just entered a grassy field, and other than a few small hillocks, there was nothing else in the vicinity.

  Gunfire sprayed from the SUV’s windows, the bullets whining as they kicked up dirt around his feet. With no other options, he ran for the ditch again, using the berm for cover as the Escalade came closer. Stopping to check the load in his Beretta, he peeked up at the highway to see the sheriff’s cruiser approaching, cutting off escape to that direction. The Escalade would be on him in a few seconds, unless…

  Sticking the Beretta into its holster, Bolan dropped to his hands and knees and crawled as fast as he could down the ditch toward the Bitterman house. As he’d hoped, he found a small drainage pipe that went under the road. It was barely wide enough for his broad shoulders, but he didn’t hesitate, wriggling inside as fast as he could. If they figured out where he’d gone and cut off both ends of the pipe, he was screwed, but Bolan still didn’t waver, shinnying through the dry, dusty tube, aiming for the circle of green-lit darkness a few yards away.

  He heard shouts from above, the men yelling at one another over where their quarry might have gone. Reaching the other end of the drainage pipe, Bolan quietly climbed out and snuck back down the ditch to the intersection south of the Bitterman home. He looked back to see the cruiser driving slowly along the ditch on the other side, but he couldn’t see the SUV at all. Might have tried to catch up to Kelly, he thought. Making sure the deputy in the car couldn’t see him, Bolan ran across the road and into the other ditch, then started up the side road back to his Caddy.

  The growl of an engine to his right made Bolan turn his head. He saw the Escalade burst out from behind the house, juking and weaving, as if it was following someone running ahead of it. Bolan saw Kelly running with every ounce of strength she possessed, but still being cut off by the SUV every dozen yards or so, making her veer off in a different direction. Bolan’s blood boiled at how the driver was toying with her. Glancing behind him to make sure the cruiser wasn’t coming yet, the Executioner rose out of the ditch and loped toward the chase on an intercept course.

  Finally, Kelly couldn’t run any farther and made a last furtive attempt to slip around the SUV, which easily cut her off, coming close enough to smack her with the right front fender. She skidded to a stop on the ground, rolling over on her back, panting out clouds of vapor in the cool night air.

  The Escalade stopped a few yards away, and a man got out of the driver’s side, pointing a pistol at the girl. Kelly raised her hands. The man marched over, grabbed her by the arm and began hauling her back to the SUV. He’d holstered his pistol and was speaking into a cell phone as he reached the vehicle.

  “Boss? Yeah, I got her. I’m bringing her back right—” was all he had time to say before Bolan stepped out from behind the SUV and put a bullet into the back of his head. The man dropped to the ground, his fingers sliding off Kelly’s arm as she stood stunned for a moment before looking around wildly and seeing Bolan walking toward her. She sagged against the vehicle with relief, then froze as he put a finger to his lips.

  The dead man’s cell phone was still on, with a voice on the other end saying, “Mateo? Mateo? What’s happening? Where are you?”

  Bolan picked up the cell. “Mateo can’t come to the phone at the moment, and won’t be able to ever again, seeing as how he just got a bullet between his eyes.”

  There was silence on the other end for a few seconds. “Is this the American? The ex-Blackwater employee?”

  Bolan wasn’t in the mood to play. “Nope. I’m your worst nightmare—a Department of Justice agent who just survived almost being killed by sheriff’s deputies and men in your employ. I assume I’m speaking to someone at the Cristobal Pharmaceutical Company?”

  “You are speaking to the head of security, in fact, Mr. Cooper. I don’t know how or why you wound up in our little town, but I’m afraid you won’t be leaving any time soon.”

  “You’re right, I won’t—not until I’ve burned your entire operation to the ground. I wouldn’t worry about finding me anymore. I’ll be coming after you now. You’ll be seeing me very soon.” Bolan snapped the phone closed and waved Kelly to the passenger side of the SUV. “Get in, we’re taking this ride.”

  She ran around the hood and climbed into the seat. Bolan took a few moments to strip the man of his pistol and extra magazines, then got in and drove toward the road.

  There was an unopened bottle of water in the cupholder between the seats. Bolan handed it to the teen. “All right, drink, and then tell me everything you know about what’s going on here.”

  Kelly gulped long swallows before lowering the bottle. “I don’t know all that much. My dad was involved with bringing Cristobal in from the beginning. He said it would revitalize Quincyville. Well, it has, but over the past couple years, the company’s been exerting more and more control over what’s been going on in town. They’ve got several people on the town board, the county, the chamber of commerce, you name it, they’ve got a hand in it.”

  She drank from the bottle again, almost draining it. The cell phone on Bolan’s leg rang. He glanced down to see R. Quintanar in the caller ID box. Flipping the phone open, he closed it again as he turned right onto the highway heading south toward the interstate. “I’m sorry to have to ask this, but what happened to your parents?”

  “I don’t know! I know Dad was really busy working with the big shots at Cristobal to make sure everything ran smoothly. From what I could tell, they were planning to expand their operation to other regions, using the Quincyville plant as their distribution center. Apparently they’ve already got smaller shipping points established all over the country, but they want to decentralize more.”

  Bolan glanced over at her, his eyebrow raised. “How do you know all of this?”

  “When there’s nothing else to talk about over dinner, you end up listening instead…” Kelly’s eyes welled with tears up as the impact of what she’d just said hit her.

  Bolan checked his rearview mirror. As expected, he saw a familiar-looking sheriff’s cruiser approaching fast. “Again, I’m sorry about what happened, but you have to tell me as much as you can.” Off to his left, he saw the brightly lit grounds of the Cristobal factory. Instead of turning in, which he knew the deputies would expect him to do, Bolan pressed the gas pedal to the floorboard, making the SUV’s big engine growl as it surged forward down the road.

  Kelly glanced back. “Shit, I thought we lost these guys.”

  “Not yet. Keep talking.”

  “So last night my mom comes up to my room and tells me we have to leave, like right now. She was pretty practical about it, having a bag packed for each of us.”

  Bolan checked on the cruiser again, which was about fifty yards away and closing. “Why’d she do that? Seems like you all had a pretty sweet setup there.”

  Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know. About seven or eight months ago, she and Dad started having all these secret conversations and would stop talking every time I came into the room. I didn’t think too much about it, as long as they weren’t getting divorced, right? I figured Dad either found out something or was doing something not altogether legal on the side that involved the company, and someone found out about it. He was always kind of shiesty like that…”

  She sniffed and drained the rest of the bottle. “The next thing I knew, Deputy Quintanar’s
at our house, and Mom’s telling me to go hide. I start to climb into the crawl space above my bathroom, and then I hear a pistol shot, so I go down to see if Mom needs any help. I came in just in time to see her…see her get shot…”

  She angrily wiped tears away. “I want that bastard to go to jail, or die for what he did to my parents.”

  “I can’t guarantee either of those things are going to happen, but I’ll do everything I can to bring them to justice.”

  The cruiser’s red-and-blue lights came on behind them, but there was no siren yet. Bolan glanced at her. “If you’ve got yourself together, take the wheel. Keep driving straight south.”

  She gaped at him but moved over the center console to grab the wheel. “Where are you going?”

  “To get rid of our tail.” Bolan pointed to a button on the steering wheel. “When I tell you to, hit that.”

  He slid over the top of the driver’s seat into the back, where he’d seen a Mossberg 590 shotgun on the seat. He checked the cruiser, which was coming ever closer, lights flashing, but not making any move to try to run them off the road—yet. Bolan lowered both passenger windows on the back doors, then checked the load in the shotgun. Three-inch rifled slugs. He racked the slide, then climbed into the third seat and braced himself. “Okay, press that button and brace yourself—this is going to be loud!”

  The rear liftgate of the Caddy began to lower, letting in a blast of cold night air. As soon as Bolan saw the cruiser’s hood, he unloaded on it, holding the Mossberg’s trigger down and cycling the pump so that he emptied the entire 8-round magazine in just over three seconds.

  The front end of the cruiser disintegrated. The grille splintered apart under the heavy slugs, which continued on to blow the radiator to pieces, spraying coolant like green blood over the pavement. The hood sprang up, blocking the entire windshield. Belts shredded as the fan blades flew apart, ricocheting off the crankcase and slicing through fluid lines. Both tires blew at almost the exact same time, shrapnel from the blown-apart engine shredding them to pieces. The car juked left, then right as it skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, smoking and steaming. The deputies scrambled out of the wreck, clawing their pistols out, but the Escalade was already out of range.

  “Raise it!” The liftgate closed again, and Bolan walked down the narrow aisle past the two rows of seats to the front passenger chair. Still keeping the SUV on the road, Kelly shook her head. “What the hell was that?” she asked loudly.

  Bolan’s ears were ringing, too. Even with the windows down, the Mossberg packed quite a wallop. “A surefire way to get rid of a tailgater.”

  She stared at him, then smiled thinly. “Did you get either of them?”

  “Nope, I wanted to make sure they weren’t able to keep coming after us. Don’t worry, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of them. If you really want your chance at Quintanar, you’ll probably get it.” He watched her digest that news, pleased to see she wasn’t still spitting fire and expletives, but seeming to actually consider the idea, and what might happen.

  Kelly checked the rearview mirror as she slowed to a respectable speed. “Okay, what next?”

  “We have to get off the main roads. I hope you know the backcountry.”

  “Yeah, out here there’s nothing to do but drive up and down these roads and get shit-faced in cornfields. You could say I know the area pretty damn well.”

  “Good. Get us back to the Miracle Mile Motel, on the north side of town. We’ll hole up there while I get in touch with my people.” Bolan reached for the satellite phone clipped to his belt, but when he tried to activate it, he realized he was holding a worthless piece of plastic. One of the close calls had been almost too close—a bullet had pierced the bottom part of the phone, shattering it. “Got a cell on you?”

  Kelly slapped her pockets. “Crap, it’s in my purse back at the house. Sorry.”

  Bolan frowned. “I thought you kids didn’t go anywhere without those things nowadays.”

  She glared at him. “What can I say? I’ve been a bit distracted, what with men invading my house, killing my parents and shooting the place up…” She stared out the windshield for a moment. “God, that sounded crass, even for me.”

  Bolan reached out and patted her shoulder. “I know, but for the next little bit, that’s what’s going to keep you going. I don’t know when you’ll have time to cry for your mom and dad, but it probably won’t be for a while, so save that grief until the time is right.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

  Bolan smiled, a thin-lipped grin with no warmth in it whatsoever. “For the time being, I’d suggest turning it to anger at the men who did this to your family.”

  Kelly grinned back, more of a baring of her teeth than anything. “I can do that.”

  7

  Deputy Rojas Quintanar watched the Escalade vanish into the darkness, still stunned by the complete reversal of fortune he’d suffered over the past ten minutes. What should have been a simple recovery had turned into a true debacle, with three men dead and his brother badly injured. And to top it all off, one man had done all this damage.

  He heard a dull whoompf come from underneath the remains of the cruiser, and looked over to see fire licking up through the shattered engine compartment as some errant spark ignited leaking gasoline. He stared at the car, shook his head, then opened the driver’s door, got his hat and placed it securely on his head.

  His brother, shotgun still in hand, stared at him. “Shouldn’t we put this out?”

  “Call it in for the goddamn fire department, I’ve got fucking bigger problems to deal with.” As he said that, bright halogen headlights lit up the night as a vehicle approached from the north. Quintanar glanced up to see the one SUV he least wanted to at that moment.

  The black Escalade ESV glided to a stop behind the now blazing cruiser. The tinted passenger window slid down to reveal the face of Quintanar’s boss, Feliz De Cavallos.

  “Rojas, Maximo, good to see you’re both all right. Our guard saw the activity on the road and radioed it in. I thought I’d come out personally and see how you’re taking care of our…interests.”

  Quintanar opened his mouth to speak, but De Cavallos raised his hand. “Why don’t you get inside, and we’ll discuss this on the way back to town?” Both rear passenger doors swung open.

  Exchanging an apprehensive look with his brother, the deputy accepted the invitation, climbing in behind the passenger seat while his brother got in behind the driver. The doors swung shut without their having to touch them, and De Cavallos swiveled his captain’s chair around to face the two men.

  For his part, Quintanar was acutely aware of the walled-off cargo area at his back. No one had ever found out what was inside—at least, and lived to tell about it. Rumors ran the gamut from it housing some kind of mobile artillery or heavy machine gun platform to a personal torture chamber that De Cavallos used for interrogation or for simply inflicting pain. Personally, Quintanar hoped it was the former.

  Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’ve already put out an APB on the company vehicle and have scrambled all off-duty officers to set up roadblocks on all roads accessing town. Our people are handling the scene for the Bitterman house, and the survivors are also getting medical attention.”

  “Yes, I noticed that of the men killed and injured three were ours. Your brother, while severely wounded, will apparently survive.”

  Quintanar breathed an internal sigh of relief at the news, but he also caught the undertone in De Cavallos’s voice. “Sir, everyone at the site did everything they could to apprehend the girl and this Agent Cooper. Unfortunately, he was very skilled.”

  “Are you saying that he was better than all of you?”

  “Well, he did manage to fight his way through six men, rescue the girl that we had in our custody and escape.” Quintanar didn’t go any further.

  “So what makes you think you’ll be able to capture him if your paths cross a second time?”


  A thin smile split the deputy’s face. “Because he cannot take on the entire town.” He grabbed the microphone on his lapel and spoke into it. “Dispatch, this is Rojas. Issue a BOLO alert for Matt Cooper and Kelly Bitterman, last seen heading south on Highway 22 in a black company Escalade, license plate Whiskey-Foxtrot-Tango-Five-Nine-Zero. Will be creating a bulletin for all local media with general description in next two hours. Have a sketch artist waiting when I return.”

  De Cavallos didn’t say a word, but just sat back and watched Quintanar as he spoke. When the deputy was finished, his boss leaned forward. “What makes you think he isn’t in the next county by now, heading for the nearest sheriff’s department or police station?”

  Quintanar didn’t drop his gaze, but stared the other man right in the eye. “With what proof? A teenage girl who’s already been in trouble as his only eyewitness? Plus, he’s not the type to cut and run. He’s going to stay around to find whatever he thinks he needs to take us all down. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s almost like he’s taking this personally…like it doesn’t matter that he stumbled into something that should be making him call for backup, he’s going to see it through to the end himself.” Quintanar smiled again. “That kind of attitude is definitely going to get him killed.”

  Quintanar’s boss didn’t reply for a moment, leaving the deputy wondering about his silence. He looks like I just confirmed something for him, he thought. Just when Quintanar was about to continue, De Cavallos spoke. “For your sake, I hope so. Given what has just happened, you seem very confident that you’ll be seeing him again.”

  “That son of a bitch embarrassed me and almost killed my brother. He’s putting everything we’ve built here at risk. You’re damn right I’m going to track him down, and bring you his head.”

  De Cavallos regarded the deputy for a moment, then nodded. “That is exactly what I expected to hear. Of course, I will be reinforcing the sheriff’s department with Cristobal security. Our men will be sweeping through town, looking for any sign of this Matt Cooper. There will be no capturing him alive. Standing orders will be to shoot on sight.”