Fire Zone

“Where’s Buck?”

The lead firefighter shook his head. He tried to grab Bolan’s arm to stop him, but the warrior was not to be deterred so easily. He broke the grip and ran back. The wall of voracious flame he had breached before was gone now, moving on with a speed that amazed him. He swiped at his goggles, removing a thin sheen of soot that had kept him from seeing Buck limping along. The firefighter’s right leg refused to bear his weight. If he kept hopping that way, he would never get to safety.

In a flash, Bolan got to the firefighter’s side and slipped an arm around him to lend some support.

“You’re some kind of madman,” Buck grated out. “Nobody’s paying you to look after me. Hell, they’re not even paying me that much. I’m a volunteer, like the rest of my team.”

Bolan steered Buck off at an angle, goaded by the increasing heat at his back. They finally reached the creek and sloshed into it.

“Where’re the others? Where are they?”

“Get down into the water,” Bolan ordered. He shoved Buck to a sitting position. “They’re a bit farther upstream.”

“You saved Lee? Lee Masterson?”

Bolan immersed himself in the stream and felt every burn and blister on his body turn to ice as the water washed over him. He still had to use his respirator to breathe, but the fire now ran parallel to the stream.

“We’re gonna make it,” Buck said. “You saved me.”

“You’d have made it on your own.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. I think my leg’s broken from a spill I took. If it turned into a compound break, there’s no way I could have made it to safety. Hell, I couldn’t have made it to the railroad tracks, much less here.”

“Railroad?”

“There’s one that runs parallel to the stream, a mile farther downhill,” Buck said. “But what good’re train tracks? They’ve cleared the regular traffic just to be on the safe side. I wish we could get supplies sent by train.” Buck closed his eyes and choked back his pain. Talking kept his mind off his injury. “Even then, the higher-ups don’t like to depend on trains. The heat can actually melt the tracks and warp the rails. Then we’d have a derailment as well as a fire to deal with.”

“Clear the traffic? There was a train that came by recently?”

Buck moaned softly as he clutched his leg.

Bolan rummaged through the firefighter’s pack and found a morphine syringe. He expertly opened the ampule, then injected the drug directly into the injured leg.

“Burns. Never had a shot like that before.”

“You’ll get sleepy in a minute. What about the train?”

“Tracks,” Buck said in a weak voice. “Don’t know the schedule but the boss said they had to get one out of the way ’fore we could move in equipment. Equipment. Need…” Buck drifted off to a troubled sleep, but the pain was bearable for him now, thanks to the narcotic.

Bolan made sure Buck’s head would remain above the water, then yelled for the other firefighters. When he saw the bright yellow jacket with the orange stripes splashing downstream toward them, he knew Buck would be all right. The fire team leader had recovered and would provide needed guidance for the rest of his men.

Bolan left before the fire team leader reached them to ask questions better left unanswered. He made his way in the direction Buck had indicated and saw the railroad tracks.

This was how the mercenaries had gotten the heavy gold away from the area, with little risk they would be found out. Where did they ship it? Like a hunting dog on a scent, the Executioner went to the train tracks and began walking. His mission was just beginning.

4

The Executioner reached a switching juncture in the railroad tracks. From what he could tell, one went due west toward Oregon and the Pacific coast while the other angled to the southwest. If the mercenaries had loaded their stolen gold onto a train, it could have gone in either direction. It was time for him to get some help.

Bolan fiddled with his satellite phone a bit and finally got a connection to Stony Man Farm. Kurtzman came online immediately.

“Good to hear from you, Striker.”

“The gold was trucked to a railroad spur, loaded on a freight car and it’s on its way out of Idaho. Did it go west or southwest?”

“We’ve been looking into this,” Kurtzman responded. “All the fires preceding gold thefts were set near rail lines.”

“That’s how they get the gold away. Where do they take it?”

“We’re working on that.” Kurtzman sounded distant. Bolan knew he was juggling intel input from a half-dozen different sources. That didn’t make waiting any easier. He kept hiking along the tracks, choosing the line going to the southwest for no good reason other than it felt right. His survival instincts had been honed to perfection over the years, and he had learned to rely on his gut to find what others couldn’t.

“There’s a new fire,” Kurtzman said.

“I almost got caught in it. They blew up the truck they used to move the gold from the mine to cover their tracks.”

“Unless you’re in western Nevada watching the forests in Pine Grove along the California border go up in smoke, we’re talking about a different fire.”

“What gold mine is near the new fire?”

“The burn started outside the town of Hawthorne. There are two major gold producers there, but only one has a railroad line not owned by the mining company running alongside its property.”

“How long has the fire been burning?”

“We got a satellite view almost immediately. Lots of satellite recon resources are being retasked to watch the western states because of this. The fire hasn’t been burning longer than a half hour.”

“Check the tracks for moving freight trains. Watch for offloading and determine their destinations.”

“It’s being done as you speak, Striker. Only one train meets all the criteria,” Kurtzman said. “Its destination is Oakland, California. From the manifest, it carries container shipments headed for overseas ports. Made in America.”

Bolan said wryly, “Stolen in the U.S. is more like it. I need transport to the Oakland shipyard.”

“There’s a problem with transport, Striker,” Kurtzman said. “The V-22 returned to its home base after you left so precipitously. Everything else is tied up fighting the fires. We can’t even get a spec ops team in for another six hours.”

“No reason to bring in the cavalry,” Bolan said. “The bad guys have already ridden into the sunset.” He looked west and knew that was the literal truth. The mercenaries had finished their work and moved on, leaving the forest ablaze around Boise. Trying to catch them near the fires in Nevada was also a fool’s errand. He would arrive too late to do anything more than tramp through forests turned to charcoal.

“Striker, we have transport for you, but you’ll have to share the ride.”

“When and where?” Bolan got his answer, but he didn’t like it.

“SO WHO ARE YOU?” the small, wiry lawman demanded, coal-black eyes sharp and hard as they fixed on Bolan. He had a gray mustache waxed to sharp points and sported a ten-gallon cowboy hat with a snakeskin band straight out of some B western. He wore his sidearm in an Old West–style hard leather holster. From where he stood, Bolan could not see the make of the gun but thought it was probably a replica of the old .44 Peacemaker.

“Names don’t matter.”

“I didn’t ask your name. I don’t give two hoots and a holler about what you call yourself—or what somebody told you to call yourself. Who are you? Not FBI. They come waltzing in, lording it over everybody. First words out of their mouths are ‘I’m Special Agent Who Doesn’t Give a Shit,’ and you’re not local. Not with the pressure coming down on me. You can’t be CIA. They don’t operate inside the country. So, I’ll ask again, not quite so polite this time. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the cargo you’ll get to Oakland, Marshal Phillips.”

“Closemouthed,” the U.S. marshal said. For the first time a small smile curled the corners of his mouth. It didn’t last long. “You’re taking me off my assignment, you know.”