Blood Play

CHAPTER FIVE

The taxi had spun completely by the time it left the road and crashed into a guardrail. Unlike earlier, this time the car didn’t merely glance off the barrier. Instead, it snapped the wooden supports and left the railing in twisted shards as it flipped and went briefly airborne before landing upright on a steep-pitched dirt incline leading to Tijeras Arroyo, a normally dry flood channel that was now swollen with runoff from the day’s rain. The taxi was still turned around and momentum carried it backward downhill into the raging current. For a moment the vehicle bobbed on the surface, surrounded by clots of tumbleweed and other brush dislodged by floodwaters. Then, as water surged through the opened windows and shattered windshield, the taxi slowly sank and had soon disappeared from view.

Back on the roadway the Chevy Nova had also spun completely before coming to a stop. Cherkow groaned in the driver’s seat, his rib cage throbbing from yet another collision with the steering wheel. His right knee had slammed into the dashboard and throbbed with pain, as well. The engine had died and the right front headlight had been crushed, leaving a single beam shining through the rain, illuminating the stretch of road Cherkow had sped along moments before. Far up the hill leading back to the airport, a police cruiser raced downhill toward him, its rooftop lights flashing.

Cherkow grimaced as he retrieved his MP-446 and staggered out into the rain. Behind him, the panel truck had stopped in the middle of the road and was backing up.

“Nice work!” one of his cohorts called out through the shattered rear window.

“It’s not over yet!” Cherkow shouted through the rain. Favoring his sore knee, he hobbled to the break in the guardrail. He was staring down into the arroyo when lightning shone on the brownish floodwaters. Cherkow watched intently as the cab slowly disappeared beneath the floodwaters. He took aim with his autopistol, on the lookout for any trace of the men who’d been inside the vehicle. When no one surfaced, he scanned the dirt slope to see if anyone had been thrown clear. All he could see were the taxi’s tire tracks and a few pieces of sodden litter bogged down in the mud.

Behind Cherkow, the police cruiser reached the flat stretch of the roadway, and its siren shrieked to life above the thunder and harsh patter of rain. The Russian crouched behind the mangled guardrail and waited for the squad car to draw closer. When it came to a stop twenty yards shy of the Chevy, he raised his gun and lined his sights on the officer riding shotgun in the front seat. Behind Cherkow, the gunman in the panel truck took aim as well and let loose with his Kalashnikov.

The cruiser’s front windshield disintegrated and a stream of 7.62 mm NATO rounds took out the cop behind the wheel, obliterating his neck and jaw. The officer riding alongside him, already bloodied by flying glass, was next to die, struck down by a volley from Cherkow’s Viking. The man had partially opened his door and tumbled out of the car, landing on the gleaming asphalt.

Cherkow made certain there was no one else inside the vehicle, then broke from cover and limped back toward the Chevy. Before he could reach the muscle car, the rear doors of the panel truck swung open and the gunman with the AK-47 shouted, “Get in!”

“I want to check for evidence!” Cherkow shouted back.

“There’s no time!” the other man retorted. “There’ll be more cops here any minute!”

Cherkow hesitated, then changed course and staggered to the truck. His comrade helped him aboard, then pulled the doors closed and yelled to the driver, “Let’s go!”

Slowly the truck began to pick up speed. Cherkow dropped to the floor and sat, wheezing slightly as he ran one hand along his right side, trying to pinpoint which of his ribs had been cracked. Franklin Colt lay nearby, still bound and hooded.

“Has he talked yet?” Cherkow asked.

“No,” one of the abductors responded, giving Colt a fierce shove. “But we’ll loosen his tongue once we get to the safe house.”

Cherkow grinned at Colt. “Nice job souping up that car of yours,” he told the prisoner. “You gave me a chance to catch up with your friends. Too bad they won’t be able to help you.”

MACK BOLAN WAS DISORIENTED when he first came to and found himself immersed in the cold, murky water of the flood channel. He was still in the rear of the taxi, secured by his seat belt, slouched at an odd angle. The taxi had tipped onto its side as it dropped below the waterline and, though it had come to a rest at the base of the culvert, the vehicle continued to wobble slightly, jostled by the swift-moving current.

Air, Bolan thought to himself, closing his mouth to keep from taking in any more water. Need more air.

Reaching for his waist, he clawed open his seat belt then let himself float upward to the driver’s side of the taxi, which now lay closest to the surface and had yet to fill with water. When he reached the air pocket, the Executioner gasped, spitting brackish fluid from his lungs. He drew in a few deep breaths and submerged himself once more. There was no partition between the front and back seat, and he was able to quickly reach his fellow commandos. Grimaldi was still out cold behind the steering wheel, but Kissinger had come to and was freeing himself from his seat belt. Bolan reached through the water and tapped him to get his attention, then gestured, first at the air pocket above him, then at Grimaldi. Kissinger nodded and lunged upward as Bolan reached around the Stony Man pilot and unclipped his seat belt, then pulled him clear of the steering wheel.

Kissinger was coughing when Bolan returned to the ever-shrinking pocket of air and hoisted Grimaldi’s head above the waterline. He turned the pilot’s head to one side and expelled water from his mouth, then gently clenched an arm around the other man’s chest and squeezed him, just below the diaphragm. Grimaldi convulsed slightly and sputtered, involuntarily ridding himself of still more ingested water.

“Where are we?” he gasped.

“I’d say hell, only it’s a little wet for that,” Kissinger said, slapping away a small clot of debris floating near his face.

“We’re in some kind of flood channel,” Bolan guessed.

“More like a river,” Kissinger said.

A flash of lightning gave the men a brief glimpse of the water’s surface, which lay only a few yards above them.

“We can get out through the back windshield,” Bolan said. He turned to Grimaldi. “Think you can manage it?”

“I’ll sure as hell try,” Grimaldi said, coughing out the words.

Bolan went first. He drew in another breath, then dropped below the waterline and twisted his body so that when he kicked against the driver’s headrest he could propel himself through the windshield he’d shot out earlier. Once clear of the taxi, he extended his arms and swam to the surface. There, surrounded by floating bits of tumbleweed, he treaded water and fought the current as he looked around him. Uphill to his right was a small bridge spanning the arroyo. He spotted the section of guardrail they’d crashed through and, beyond that, the roadway and the flashing lights of what he assumed was a patrol car. His ears were clogged and a faint din resonated through his skull, but he could also hear the incessant wailing of a siren. By the time Kissinger and Grimaldi had rejoined him, two more sirens were competing with the peals of thunder. Bolan saw a squad car speed across the bridge, heading southward, while yet another cruiser was making its way down the incline leading away from the airport.

“Cavalry to the rescue,” Kissinger muttered as he swam close to Bolan.

Rather than fight the current, the men conserved their strength and allowed the water to carry them away from the road. Slowly they made their way to the culvert’s edge. Bolan’s legs were going numb by the time he reached a point where he could touch bottom. He lumbered up out of the water and collapsed on the muddy embankment, exhausted. Kissinger and Grimaldi straggled ashore soon after, shivering in the rain.

“What now?” Grimaldi asked.

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.