Blood Play

As if in response, the beam of a high-powered searchlight cut a swath through the darkness and fell on the men. Squinting, Bolan glanced uphill and traced the light to a squad car that had pulled to a stop near the break in the guardrail. Two officers had already begun to climb down the embankment, guns drawn. With their weapons still back in the taxi, the Executioner realized they were no longer in a position to give chase to Franklin Colt’s abductors, much less take them on.

“For now,” he told his colleagues, “it looks like we’re going to have to play ball with the locals.”

CHAPTER SIX

Taos, New Mexico

One night every week for eighteen years Walter Upshaw had taught an extension course on Native American Heritage at the University of New Mexico’s Taos facility on Civic Plaza Drive. The tribal leader charged nothing for his services, and the class enrollment fee was underwritten by the Pueblo. The class was always full, made up of local residents as well as tribal members, and there were those cynics who derided Upshaw as using the teacher’s pulpit as a blatant effort to bolster his political clout and presence in the community. Upshaw always denied the claims, insisting that he felt it was important for both his people and the locals to cultivate a better understanding of native customs. Anyone who took the class would have backed him up as they invariably came away with the sense that Upshaw was truly passionate about the history and traditions of his forefathers.

Another part of the TPGC president’s weekly ritual for most of those eighteen years was the short trek to Taos Plaza, where he would settle in at his favorite booth at Ogilvie’s Bar and hold court with fellow teachers, students and anyone else who struck his fancy and would accept an invitation to join in on what would usually be a few hours of lively debate and raconteuring. This particular night, even the torrential downpour and a preoccupation with other matters couldn’t keep Upshaw making his usual after-class visit to the local watering hole. Only two colleagues from the university had decided to brave the elements with him and the bar was less than half-full, but Upshaw still managed to drum up a festive air among the small gathering.

As was his custom, the tribal elder offered to pick up the tab for anyone drinking something other than alcohol. A steadfast teetotaler, all his life Upshaw had bristled at the stereotype of “drunken Indians.” He frowned as well on most other forms of substance abuse, a hard-line stance that had led to an ongoing estrangement from his only son after Donny’s rebellious adolescence had led him to alcoholism and two prison stints, one for DUI and the other for heroin possession. Donny had gone through rehab as a means of shortening his second sentence and had been clean for over five months, but Upshaw had thus far refused to reconcile with his son. There was a part of him that regretted his recalcitrance, especially on nights like this, his son’s fortieth birthday. The sentiment, however, was always dwarfed by Upshaw’s grim memory of the day, almost ten years ago, when his beloved wife, Paulina, had been killed in a head-on collision while riding home from the annual Taos Solar Music Festival. Donny had been behind the wheel and had suffered bruises that were only minor compared to those administered by his father shortly after Upshaw had bailed him out of jail, where Donny had been incarcerated with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Taos being the small town it was, the two men had crossed paths countless times in the years since, but in every instance Upshaw had refused to meet his son’s gaze. During that time, Donny had e-mailed his father even more frequently, begging for forgiveness and making overtures for a renewed relationship, but, as he had with the message Donny had sent him earlier that day, Upshaw’s response had always been to delete the communiqués without so much as reading them.

While this matter weighed somewhat on Upshaw’s mind during the two hours he spent at Ogilvie’s, there was another, more pressing concern lurking behind his convivial facade, and once he’d paid his bill and started to drive home through the remnants of the storm, Upshaw dropped all pretense and brooded about his predicament with the Tribal Governing Council. Over the past few days he’d casually brought up the matter of expanding the casino with other council members and found, much to his dismay, that the majority of them were, at best, lukewarm to his small-scale plans. He’d avoided confronting anyone directly, but the response had confirmed his suspicions that Freddy McHale had indeed been lobbying under the table to secure support for GHC’s proposal to replace the existing structure with a larger facility and allow for a cleanup of the old uranium mines, a move that would entail sharing the land’s mineral rights. Worse yet, there now seemed a good chance that McHale was also right about the ground shifting beneath Upshaw’s political feet. The way things stood, Upshaw feared that if he were to run for reelection this time he might well be defeated. The prospect daunted him, and he was determined to do all he could to avoid such an ignominy.

There was plenty of time before the election, and in his battle to turn the council tide back in his favor Upshaw still had one potent ace up his sleeve. Franklin Colt.

Upshaw knew Colt from the latter’s periodic speaking tours throughout the state where, as a former DEA agent, Franklin spoke at local high schools and reservations about the dangers of drug abuse. It wasn’t in this capacity, however, that Upshaw saw Colt as an invaluable ally but rather the Rosqui native’s position as an officer with the Roaming Bison Casino’s security force. Colt had, over the past few weeks, been privy to a handful of incidents involving suspicious activity at both the casino and the reservation’s controversial nuclear waste facility. Looked at separately, the incidents may have appeared isolated exceptions to GHC’s overall management practices. Placed together, however, there seemed evidence of a pattern of covert activity that went far beyond the realm of profit-skimming and money laundering—alleged crimes that had led to the outster of Global Holdings’ predecessors. Much as he’d been tempted to go to his council members with these suspicions, Upshaw had held back, wary they’d be dismissed as the desperate innuendos of a man who’d do anything to hold on to power. What he needed from Colt was corroboration; hard, solid evidence that would convince the council that GHC was every bit as corrupt as the mafioso figures that had ruled Las Vegas during its early years as a gambling mecca. Earlier in the day Colt had called Upshaw saying he’d finally secured just such evidence and would forward it once he’d run it past a friend working for the government to get his opinion on its viability as a proverbial “smoking gun.”

Much as he looked forward to the revelation, Upshaw was concerned over the one possible concession Colt might demand in exchange for it. In a rueful twist of fate similar to those that drove some of the more compelling tribal legends Upshaw taught in his extension class, Franklin Colt had come to know the tribal leader’s son by virtue of the fact that Donny lived on the property of Alan Orson, one of Colt’s longtime friends. Insofar as the importance of family support had always been a cornerstone to Colt’s speeches about dealing with drug abuse, he’d taken Donny’s side and was insistent that Walter’s forgiveness and support was crucial to his son’s long-term recovery.

Upshaw had given lip service to those pleas, telling Colt he’d consider the advice, but deep in his heart he doubted that he would ever bring himself to take such a step. The way he saw it, nothing he said to his son would bring his wife back from the grave, and Donny’s responsibility for the woman’s death wasn’t something he felt he could sweep under the rug as if it were some small transgression. Colt could name just about any other terms he might want in terms of compensation for divulging what he’d found out about skeletons in GHC’s closet, but for Upshaw, embracing Donny as a prodigal son was a favor he couldn’t willingly oblige.

These thoughts were still sifting through Upshaw’s troubled mind when he turned off the main road leading out of Taos and drove through the reservation, his wipers squeaking across the windshield. Two side roads later he turned a final time and slowed to a stop next to the mailbox situated near the wrought-iron gate guarding the long driveway leading uphill to his mountain home. He pushed the remote clipped to his visor, and the gate began to slowly creak open as he rolled down his window and reached out through the rain to get his mail. He was withdrawing a handful of bills and other correspondence when there was a stirring in the tall bushes growing up just behind the mailbox. Upshaw’s eyes widened with disbelief as the man he knew as Pete Trammell emerged through the shrubbery, drenched from the rain.

“What are you doing here?” Upshaw demanded.

“Your son’s upset that you didn’t send him a birthday card,” Petenka Tramelik replied. “He wanted me to send you a little message.”

With that, Tramelik raised his gloved hand and calmly fired a round from his Raven Arms MP-25, the same weapon Vladik Barad had used to kill Alan Orson.

Upshaw’s head lolled from the impact and the mail fell from his hand. Dead, the tribal leader slipped his foot off the brake and his car slowly eased forward, just missing the still-opening gate. As Tramelik watched on, the sedan continued up the driveway another twenty yards before failing to negotiate the first turn leading into the mountains. Mature cottonwoods grew up along both sides of the road, and the car came to an abrupt stop once it left the driveway and crashed into one of them. The engine died, but Tremalik could still hear its wipers trying to fend off the rain.

The Russian operative jogged to the car and leaned in through the window. Reaching past Upshaw, he ran his hand beneath the dashboard and removed the dime-size homing bug he and Barad had been using to track Upshaw’s movements, as well as any conversations made in the vehicle. Next, Tramelik carefully frisked his victim until he came across the dead man’s cell phone. Pocketing both items, he strode back through the rain to the shrubs he’d been hiding behind and retrieved a small backpack containing a laptop and several other valuables he’d stolen from Upshaw’s mountain home hours ago, before he and Barad had laid seige to Alan Orson’s estate. He tossed in the cell phone, then trampled over the dead man’s mail and made his way back to the turnoff. Farther up the road, Donny Upshaw’s run-down Buick LeSabre was parked on the shoulder just in front of a hedge that had shielded it from his father’s view. Barad was behind the wheel. Donny was still out cold in the backseat.

Tramelik got in front and nodded to Barad, who then started the Buick and pulled back onto the road. Tramelik turned in his seat and reached over, nudging Donny with the Raven’s barrel.

“First Orson and his dog, and now your own father,” Tramelik said disapprovingly. “That’s quite a killing spree, Donny. Something tells me that when you come down off the smack and realize what you’ve done the shame is going to be too much for you.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Less than an hour had passed since the Stony Man trio had escaped from the submerged taxi. The three men were back up on the main road, sitting in the rear of a paramedic van that had arrived a few minutes earlier. They’d already had their vitals checked and had changed into dry clothes the EMTs had been instructed to bring along. Miraculously, aside from bruises and a wrenched shoulder suffered by Bolan, the men had been come through their ordeal unscathed. Now, shrouded in thermal blankets, they were waiting for their Justice Department credentials to be verified by the Albuquerque police.

Bolan had warmed up sufficiently. Shedding his blanket, he told the others, “I’m going to see what the holdup is.”

“If they’re passing out hot cocoa I’ll have a double,” Grimaldi said, his teeth chattering.

“Same here,” Kissinger added.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Bolan said.

Outside the van, University Drive had been officially closed off and officers had already taped off a crime-scene area nearly half the size of a football field. The officer standing closest to the van quickly blocked Bolan’s way the moment he stepped down onto the tarmac.

“Sorry, but you need to stay put.”

“We’ve got a friend missing out there,” Bolan countered. “We’d like to do something about it.”

“And we’ve got two dead cops along with another body back at the airport,” the officer said. “Cool your heels.”

Bolan didn’t care for the officer’s attitude but wasn’t about to take issue with it. He remained near the truck, slowly flexing his shoulder. It was stiff and he had a limited range of motion, but he doubted the injury would compromise his ability to resume what he now saw as a bona fide mission. Perhaps the plight of Franklin Colt had little bearing on national security, but given the man’s friendship with a fellow Stony Man warrior, Bolan felt a personal stake in Colt’s fate. And, too, there was the matter of him and his two colleagues barely escaping the grim fate of the two police officers now lying in body bags inside a second paramedic van parked near the squad car that had come under assault while the Executioner was struggling for his life beneath the cold waters of Tijeras Arroyo.

The rain had let up and, although Bolan could see lightning far to the north, the storm had passed Albuquerque. Any thunder accompanying the flashes was muted by the commotion out on the roadway and up overhead, where a police chopper rumbled its way southward, no doubt in pursuit of Colt’s abductors.

Twenty yards from Bolan, homicide detective David Lowe stood next to an unmarked Ford Taurus, a cell phone pressed to one ear. As he wrapped up his call, someone inside the vehicle handed the tall, sallow-faced man the three JD badge IDs belonging to Bolan, Kissinger and Grimaldi. Lowe exchanged a few words with the other man, then strode past the bullet-riddled squad car, issuing instructions to the forensics team going over the vehicle. As he approached Bolan, the detective waved aside the cop guarding the van, then handed over the badges.

“You checked out,” Lowe said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“No offense taken.”

“What exactly is it that a special agent does?” Lowe asked.

“That’s classified,” Bolan said.

Lowe shrugged and let a thin smile play across his equally thin lips. “That’s the party line we got from Washington, too. But we just lost two men on account of whoever it is you’re up against, so I was hoping you could unzip it a little.”

“If I had some information on who killed your men I’d share it,” Bolan replied. “All we know so far is they grabbed a friend of ours at the airport and made a run for it.”

“You’ve already told me that,” Lowe said. “Any idea why they grabbed him?”

Bolan shook his head. “He said there was something going on at the reservation where he works, but at this point there’s no way of knowing if that’s why he was kidnapped.”

“Which reservation?” Lowe asked. “Rosqui?”

“I think that’s the one.”

“There’s definitely a connection, then,” Lowe said. “Why’s that?”

“One of our units just came across the panel truck you described,” Lowe said. “It was parked just off the road near the interstate. No one in it.”

“They switched vehicles,” Bolan guessed.

“Most likely,” Lowe said. “Anyway, the truck was reported stolen earlier tonight from a warehouse three miles from the Roaming Bison Casino. The casino was its last stop, and the driver’s thinking someone must’ve snuck aboard while he was making a delivery.”

“Safe assumption,” Bolan said.

“I’ll make another assumption.” Lowe fixed Bolan with a straightforward gaze. “Since you guys have a finger in the pie, you’ll likely have the option of pulling rank and outflanking us on the investigation front.”