Fire Zone

Bolan had walked miles and finally had reached a spot where he jumped onto a freight train to ride into Boise. From the rail yards he had gone directly to the U.S. marshals’ office, as Kurtzman had told him to do.

“We’re on the same team,” Bolan simply said.

“A good thing since you’re bigger ’n me. Not that I haven’t had to deal with that problem most of my life. Danged near everyone’s bigger ’n me. I’m only five-foot-eight. Didn’t keep me outta the SEALs, though. Never weighed over one-fifty, either.”

“Is that with or without the mustache?”

Phillips laughed with some obvious enjoyment at the verbal riposte. Then his face went hard, and he pushed past Bolan to look into the outer office.

“No time to lollygag, mister. Our ride’s ready.” As Phillips strode through the office, men and women thrust things into his hands. He glanced at a couple folders and dropped them back onto desks. He kept several others and tucked them under his arm. Bolan followed in his wake, ignored by the deputies. That suited him fine. It gave him a chance to glance at the manila folders Phillips had discarded. All carried the Department of Homeland Security logo and dealt with recent terrorist activities.

Bolan barely settled into the backseat of a standard-issue black SUV with tinted windows as the driver floored it. He was pressed back into the seat beside the marshal.

“Here, read this,” Phillips said, passing over the files he had kept after his quick exit from the office. “What more can you tell me about the sons of bitches who set those fires?”

Bolan had started to dismiss the man again but took a closer look at what he had been handed. Two of the files were jackets on the pair he had dispatched before they had blown up the truck. The third file carried a picture of someone he had seen before in a Top Secret file at Stony Man Farm.

“Don’t know these two, except I killed both of them. This one’s a known commodity. Jacques Lecroix. Did wet work in Algeria for anyone who paid his price. He dropped off the radar screen two years ago.”

“You know your PMC recruits, mister.” Phillips didn’t miss a beat. “Is there anything more current you know about him?”

“He worked for a private military company out of Paris before he disappeared.” Bolan worked through all the threads of memory connected to Lecroix. “Africa. That’s all I remember. He might have been seen last in South Africa.”

“We got a lead on him from some wino along the Boise skid row. Not sure what Lecroix wanted, but it was obvious even to a whiskey-besotted derelict that he was being recruited as cannon fodder. I suspect Lecroix wanted to send a few of Boise’s less fortunate into the rail yard to flush out the security.”

“He could reconnoiter himself and not leave a trail,” Bolan pointed out.

“He was behind schedule, at least that was the impression. If he is hanging out with men like these two—” the marshal tapped the other files “—he’s not into finding locals to do the real dirty work for him. One was an explosives expert. The other worked for a PMC in Iraq until six months ago when he upped and disappeared. His boss thought he might have gotten a better offer and just left without giving notice.”

Bolan nodded. Allegiances were bought and paid for, and some former employers might not look favorably on anyone leaving their service for a competitor. He scanned Lecroix’s file again, trying to piece together the unrelated bits. Chances were good the mercenary had gone to work for a PMC in Africa, since his earlier training had been in the northern tier of the continent. But, as those things went, northern Africa was peaceful enough at the moment. Not more than a few abortive uprisings and rebel attacks that never amounted to anything had been reported in the past couple years. This was hardly the place for an ambitious soldier of fortune like Jacques Lecroix.

He pulled out his satellite phone and called Stony Man. Aaron Kurtzman answered immediately.

“I’m with Marshal Phillips on the way to the airport,” Bolan said, letting Kurtzman know he had to watch everything he said. “The marshal has identified the two I killed, along with Jacques Lecroix. What can you tell me about him?”

“The Katanga Swords,” came the measured answer.

“I’ve heard of the group. A PMC,” Phillips supplied, making no effort to conceal his eavesdropping. Bolan’s estimation of him went up a little. The marshal wasn’t into playing games. He knew Bolan expected him to listen to everything said and didn’t pretend otherwise.

“Out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Kurtzman said. “We’re working on more.”

Bolan signed off and tucked the phone away. He had thought this mission was a nonstarter at first. Tracking down a firebug who got his rocks off watching trees go up in flame had hardly seemed a reasonable use of his time. Once he had seen the clockwork precision of how the fires had been set and appreciated the scale of the resulting theft, he had been more favorably inclined toward the mission. Learning a mercenary of Lecroix’s caliber headed up the operation made this a high-priority item. Lecroix did not come cheap and did not waste his time unless there was a challenge in the mission. He killed as much to relieve boredom as he did to amass great wealth, but more than these casual motives, he appreciated a challenge. A man driven only by greed was vulnerable. Lecroix was more dangerous because he sought out goals other than riches.

What was he looking to do?

“He’s not taking the gold for himself. He’s been hired to steal it,” Bolan said.

“Who needs a mountain of gold?” The way Phillips spoke, he did not expect an answer, but this was a reasonable question. Somebody had hired a top-notch mercenary and his crew to steal hundreds of millions in gold. Who?

The SUV skidded to a halt and Phillips bailed out before the vehicle came to a complete stop. Bolan followed and saw a Gulfstream G550 jet waiting on the runway.

“Private? You must have called in a lot of favors for that,” Bolan said.

“Not really. As anxious as our Monsieur Lecroix is to steal the gold, there’s someone just as eager to get it back.”

Bolan climbed up the narrow steps and ducked to get inside. The corporate logo told the story.

“Is there an actual man named Lassiter behind Lassiter Industries?”

“There surely is. Set yourself down, and be sure to strap in real tight. The takeoff’s likely to be abrupt, and I told the pilot to push this puppy to its full .8 Mach.”

Bolan had barely fastened his seat belt when the acceleration pushed him into the soft seat cushions. There was no waiting at the end of the runway for takeoff, either. The pilot put the power to the twin engines and sent the corporate jet into a steep climb.

“He flew F-14s off the USS Ronald Reagan,” was the only comment Marshal Phillips made.

“THE U.S. MARSHALS’ OFFICE seems to have more resources than ever get mentioned in reports,” Bolan said. They had landed at the Oakland International Airport where a clone of the other SUV waited for them.

“Amazing what having some dedicated people who make big political contributions can do,” Marshal Phillips said. He grinned crookedly. “Truth is, there’s a whole lot of folks who want to see the forest fires ended who don’t know squat about gold being stolen. And I don’t just mean the Sierra Club or Friends of the Forest, either.”

Bolan stared out the tinted window as the other cars on the freeway slipped behind them. The driver was expert and kept them moving in and out of the tight knots of traffic that otherwise would have stalled them, getting to the rail yards in record time.