Fire Zone

Bolan turned from the guard booth and went immediately to the main office building. The double doors were closed. He tugged at one and it came open easily. The panic bar had not properly locked when the last employee had evacuated.

Halfway down the corridor was the sprawled body of a uniformed woman. She had been shot in the back of the head just like the other guard. Bolan moved from room to room. He found three more murdered security guards. Only one had tried to get his weapon free before six shots had punctured his chest. Examining the entry angles of the wounds convinced Bolan that at least three shooters had sighted in on the poor son of a bitch. From what he could tell, the same caliber weapons had ended the man’s life. The killers probably used identical model pistols. That would go with the military precision shown in this attack.

Bolan searched the building from top to bottom. Whoever had killed the guards had not looted the offices. Computers remained on desks. No drawers had been pulled out and searched. Obviously valuable display ingots remained in glass cases in the hallways. Since he found no one alive in the rest of the building to give him eyewitness information, he exited to search other parts of the sprawling mine complex.

Like a compass needle finding magnetic north, he was drawn to a large shed nearby. Heavy steel doors that had once been held closed by intricate locks stood open. Reaching down, he drew his Desert Eagle and let the muzzle precede him into the well-lit interior. Vaults along the walls were open and empty. The guards positioned at all four upper corners of the building on catwalks had been shot. From the look of it, they had put up a fierce fight but had been overwhelmed by superior firepower.

Walking into the empty expanse in the middle of the building, Bolan saw where a truck had stood next to a loading dock. It took no effort for him to imagine a half-dozen men swarming into the vaults, removing the gold and loading it into the truck before driving away with their valuable cargo.

He had only one more bit of intel to gather. It was surprisingly easy to find the manifests for each of the looted vaults. He kept a running inventory in his head as he read the numbers.

When he finished the tally he stood and stared out the doors where the truck had left.

Three-quarters of a ton of gold stolen. Fifteen thousand pounds. Well over ten million dollars.

His strides long and determined, Bolan left the building, found a car that could be hot-wired easily and roared off in pursuit of the thieves. They couldn’t be more than a few hours ahead of him. With that much of a load on the narrow, winding road leading down into Boise, they wouldn’t be able to match his breakneck pace.

2

The Executioner drove expertly and far too fast for the narrow gravel road. The mining company had maintained the road well, but hitting ninety in the straightaways and only dropping to sixty in the sharp turns took its toll on his acquired car. Every turn left that much more rubber behind and caused an increasingly uneven ride. Before long the punishment he dished out to the car caused the engine to begin sputtering.

He let up on the gas just a little when he saw an eighteen-wheeler lumbering along ahead. He was still miles outside Boise, and a quick mental calculation of the distance traveled told him this could be the stolen gold. Using the engine compression to brake, he took his foot off the accelerator and coasted into a slot directly behind the truck so that he ran in its blind spot only inches away from the bumper. The driver would have seen him approaching and by now had to know something was wrong. If he slammed on the brakes, Bolan would have to act instantly.

Such a sudden stop was what he expected. That was what he would do to try to get rid of the annoying tail he presented if the roles were reversed. But the driver tapped his brakes, sounded his horn and began slowing gradually. Suspecting a trap, the Executioner followed suit until both truck and car were at a dead stop.

He slid the .50-caliber pistol from its holster and got out of the car. Holding the heavy Desert Eagle at his side, he edged around cautiously. The truck driver had already exited the cab, looking madder than hell.

“What do you think you’re doing? This ain’t a demolition derby!”

The man waved his arms around like a windmill. Bolan didn’t see a weapon but recognized the tactic as a diversion. He ducked away, looked under the eighteen-wheeler but saw no one trying to sneak up on him from the other side. He did hear muffled noises from inside the truck.

Whirling back, he lifted his pistol. The sight of the huge bore pointed in his direction caused the driver to gasp. His mouth dropped open. He tried to speak but no words came out, and his flailing arms stopped their wild motion as he held them high above his head.

“What’s in the back?”

“I…you a cop?”

“Open it.”

The driver swallowed hard and shuffled around, keeping an eye on Bolan and the pistol in his hand. With his fist he banged twice on the door and yelled, “Mr. Kersey, I’m openin’ up.” The driver lifted the locking rod and stepped away when the door swung open.

Bolan was prepared for a hail of bullets. He was not expecting a man and several frightened women looking out.

“What’s going on?”

“Mr. Kersey, he drove up behind and stopped me and stuck that gun in my face and—”

“Shut up.” Bolan wanted answers. “Why are you in the rear of a semi?”

“Are you some kind of police officer?”

“I’m asking, you’re answering.”

“Well, put that damn thing down. My name’s Jerome Kersey and I’m the superintendent of the Lucky Nugget Mine. I work for Lassiter Industries and—”

“You’re all employees?”

“Who’d you think we were? You ordered us to evacuate, and my staff and I were the last ones out. We had to get into this semi because you said the roads were clogged and didn’t want a lot of cars adding to the traffic jam. You are from the State Police, right?”

Jerome Kersey looked around and frowned when he didn’t see any marked patrol cars.

“What’s going on? I did what you people asked, and now you’re pointing a gun at me!”

“Who told you to evacuate?”

“The state police.”

Bolan’s mind worked fast. He saw the huddle of men and women behind the mine supervisor and knew these weren’t gold thieves. There was no point in asking for ID.

“Sorry about this,” he said, holstering his pistol. “Were you told to ship out the gold bullion from the mine?”

“No, of course not,” Kersey said. “That was all locked in the storage vaults.” Then his eyes narrowed as he looked hard at Bolan. “What are you saying?”

Bolan motioned him out of the truck and to one side where they wouldn’t be overheard. He gave the man a quick once-over and saw no suspicious bulges where a gun might be hidden or a knife sheathed.

“I don’t have much time, so listen carefully and answer fully,” Bolan said. Kersey started to protest. He was in charge of hundreds of employees and was used to giving orders, not taking them. The look on his tall, dark-haired interrogator’s face shut him up. He nodded once.

“The security guards left at the mine are all dead.”

“Dead?”

“The gold has been removed from the storage vaults. I estimate about three-quarters of a ton was taken.”

“I don’t have the exact figures, but that would be close.” Kersey had gone white with shock at realizing the magnitude of his loss. Bolan doubted his reaction was from hearing that his guards were dead. The theft of all the gold would be a career-ending event. “Who did it?”

“I’m trying to find out. How long have you been away from the mine?”

“Thirty minutes, maybe a little longer.”

This surprised Bolan. The gold thieves were even more expert than he had thought. Kersey and his staff had barely left the mine before the thieves had moved in. With this new information for his timeline, Bolan doubted killing the guards had taken more than five minutes. That meant the thieves had loaded just shy of a ton of gold and transported it before he had arrived. The slice of time allotted had been enough for them to vanish into thin air.

“Did you hear or see any helicopters?”

“Of course I did. Observation planes all over. Some heavy-lifter choppers with fire retardant or water or whatever the hell they use to put out fires. They’re all over the sky.”

Bolan considered this and discarded an airlift being the method of removing the gold. Every plane would be tracked closely by air controllers directing the slurry bombers to the fire. Any unauthorized plane would be spotted instantly. And Kurtzman had not mentioned any, so there weren’t any.

“This is an incredible gold mining region. More than three million ounces have been extracted since the mine opened,” Kersey said. “You’re kidding about my gold being taken out of the vaults, aren’t you?”