Blood Play

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 inventions 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.