Blood Play

“If the situation dictates.”

“Well, here’s my situation.” Lowe gestured at the second paramedic van. “I knew the men gunned down here tonight. I knew their families, too, and I’ll likely be the one passing along word to the next of kin. Now, if something turns up here that you feel you need to keep off our radar, suit yourself, but anything that involves bringing in the perps that pulled the trigger on those men, I’d like that to be another matter. I want in on that.”

“Understood,” Bolan said, “and if it can be arranged, I’ll see to it.”

“Is that a promise?”

Bolan extended a hand to Lowe. “You have my word.”

Lowe shook Bolan’s hand and told him, “I guess that’ll have to do.”

Glorieta, New Mexico

FRANKLIN COLT SAT IN stony silence as he was driven through the night in what he presumed to be the backseat of some kind of sedan. His kidnappers had transferred him into the vehicle shortly after the exchange of gunfire near Tijeras Arroyo. His sense of time was uncertain, but he felt as if they’d been on the road for at least an hour, and judging from their speed he knew most of that time had been spent on one of the interstates. Even with the stocking cap pulled over his eyes he’d been able to detect city lights for the first twenty minutes, after which the ambient light outside the car had decreased, leading him to believe they were heading north on 1-25 along the largely undeveloped corridor between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. A few minutes earlier he’d sensed the car following a bend in the highway. If his assumption was right, it most likely meant they’d veered away from the capital and were now skirting the southern fringe of Santa Fe National Forest.

As he struggled to remain attuned to his surroundings, Colt found himself distracted by feelings of grief and dread. For most of the ride his captors had been speaking to one another in a foreign tongue, but immediately after the shoot-out they’d made a point to make sure he understood that the men he’d met at the airport had been slain while attempting to come to his rescue. There seemed little reason to doubt their word, and Colt was filled with remorse at the thought that he was responsible for their deaths. What a cruel twist of fate it was to have reestablished contact with John Kissinger only to have their reunion result in his friend’s slaying. Colt hoped for a chance to extract revenge, but given his dire circumstances he knew there was a greater likelihood that he would be the next to die. It seemed equally probable that his death wouldn’t come swiftly. Given the way he’d been questioned moments after his abduction, he knew that his captors had somehow learned that he was looking into illegal activity taking place on the reservation. There would likely be further interrogation once they reached their destination and Colt suspected that torture would likely be involved. If it came to that, he could only hope for a chance to force a struggle that would lead to him being killed outright. More importantly, he hoped that after silencing him his abductors would let the matter go. The last thing Colt wanted was for these savages to turn their sights on his family.

Colt was still mulling over his dilemma when the car turned off the highway onto the first of what turned out to be a series of side roads. For several miles the ride was smooth, but after a series of sharp turns, the car slowed to a crawl and Colt could hear the crunch of gravel under the tires as they made their way along a winding stretch of unpaved roadway. Several times the driver cursed as the car bounded roughly across deep chuckholes concealed by the recent rain. At one point the sedan veered sharply to one side and Colt was thrown against the man sitting beside him in the backseat. The man let out a pained cry and brusquely shoved Colt away, then jabbed him in the side with what felt like the butt of a pistol.

“Watch it!” Viktor Cherkow snarled, speaking in English for the first time in nearly an hour. “I’ve got cracked ribs thanks to that steering wheel of yours!”

During the verbal exchanges between his captors, Colt had gotten the sense that Cherkow was the most short-tempered of the group, and he saw in the Russian’s outburst a chance to bring things to a head before they even reached their destination.

“It’s that idiot driving who knocked me into you!” Colt retorted, leaning back across the seat and elbowing Cherkow in the ribs. “If you want to blame somebody, blame him!”

The Russian howled in agony. Colt was hoping the man would shoot him, but instead Cherkow made do with the butt of his Viking pistol, slamming it against the side of his prisoner’s head, just above the ear. It wasn’t the fatal blow Colt was hoping for. It did, however, flood his field of vision with a bright, sudden flash of light that, just as quickly, gave way to the black void of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mack Bolan stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor of Albuquerque’s El Dorado Hotel and made his way down the hall to room 547. He opened the door with his keycard and entered the two-bedroom suite that had been booked for him and his Stony Man colleagues under their Justice Department aliases. Kissinger and Grimaldi had already checked in and were seated at a table in the dining alcove, half watching cable news on a television set wedged inside a light pine entertainment unit that also included a stereo system and mini-refrigerator stocked with overpriced provisions. The two men had already gone through several packets of mixed nuts and crackers and were now snacking on packaged cookies.

“Orson still hasn’t checked in,” Bolan told them.

Grimaldi grabbed the remote and switched off the television. “Not a good sign,” he said.

“No, it isn’t.” Bolan joined the men and handed out toiletry kits he’d bought at the lobby gift shop to replace those lost to the roaring floodwaters of Tijeras Arroyo. He then gave Grimaldi and Kissinger each a bare-bones replacement cell phone.

“Mine shorted out under water,” he told them. “I figure yours did, too.”

“Thanks,” Kissinger said. “I was going to try mine again once the SIM card dried, but that usually doesn’t work.”

“Any other news?” Grimaldi asked.

“Lowe put out an APB for Orson’s car and has the Taos police on their way to check out his place.”

“There’s still a chance he was just waylaid and’ll show up here,” Kissinger offered.

“True,” Bolan said, “but given what’s happened, we have to consider that he’s somehow tied into all of this.”

“As a target of one of the perps?” Grimaldi wondered.

“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough,” Bolan said. “There’s something else. While they were searching the panel truck, they came across a map of the reservation. Colt’s place out in the mountains was marked off.”

“Their next stop?”

“Could be,” Bolan said, “but I think it was more a backup plan in case they didn’t get him at the airport.”

“If they’re looking for something and Colt didn’t have it on him,” Kissinger suggested, “they still might show up there.”

“If that’s the case, I want to be there.”

“Good idea,” Kissinger said. “Colt’s got a wife and kid.”

Bolan nodded. “Lowe’s already called and told her to be on the lookout. She has some neighbors coming by until I get there. I want to see if she can shed any light on things, then I want to get her to a safe house. Lowe’s off tracking down the families of the cops that were killed, but he’s arranged for the tribal police to chip in.”

“The reservation’s probably out of his jurisdiction anyway, right?” Grimaldi said. “They usually have some kind of sovereignty thing going on.”

“That, too,” Bolan said.

“Well, we’re cleaned up and ready to roll,” Kissinger offered. “I don’t know Colt’s wife, but I’d like to come along.”

“We’ve got a lot going on,” Bolan countered. “It might be better if we split up for now.”

“What did you have in mind?” Kissinger asked.

“Once I change, one of Lowe’s men will take me to the reservation,” Bolan said. “I think somebody should stay here on the chance Orson shows up.”

“Got it,” Kissinger said.

“Good.” Bolan turned to Grimaldi. “Lowe’s also got a crew on the way to the arroyo to fish out the taxi. We’re already cleared to get our things back, no questions asked, but it’d be best if you could be there to keep an eye on things.”

“Will do,” Grimaldi said. “We can probably salvage the guns and ammo but the notebook’s not going to be of much use.”

“We can worry about that later.”

“About Franklin’s wife,” Kissinger interjected. “How much detail did Lowe go into when he talked to her? Does she know the kind of people we’re dealing with?” Bolan nodded.

“What happened at the airport had already been on the news before Lowe called,” he said. “Some of these neighbors coming over are war vets. They’ll be armed, but I’ll still be glad when I get there.”

“Let’s just hope you get there in time,” Kissinger responded.

Bolan nodded gravely. “Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind.”

Glorieta, New Mexico

WHEN HE CAME TO, Franklin Colt found himself bound to a straight-backed wooden chair set in the middle of a small, cold room bare of any other furnishings other than a dim lightbulb shining in a wall sconce near the only doorway. The stocking cap had been removed from his head and through the gaps in the shuttered windows he could see it was still dark outside, but he had no idea how long he’d been out. His skull throbbed where he’d been struck, and he could feel that both his wrists and ankles had been chafed by the duct tape. He was now bound by thick lengths of rope tethering him to the chair. He could also feel a dull pain in his right biceps and figured this captors had to have injected him with something to keep him unconscious. One of the men was in the room with him, a pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers. When he spoke, Colt recognized the voice of the man who’d knocked him out back in the car.

“It’s about time,” Viktor Cherkow complained when he noticed that Colt had come to. “That tranq dose wasn’t all that strong.”