Don Pendleton: Toxic Terrain

Kristen Kemp sounded glad to hear from him. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’ve been better,” he said. He hated to bring a civilian into this mess, but Kemp was already involved, and judging from what he’d seen of Ag Con, she would probably be safer with him than by herself. Besides, he needed to have a bullet removed from his shoulder and have the wound sewn up, and Kemp had the skills to do the job. He didn’t dare go to the local hospital for medical attention because Ag Con would most likely be watching for him there. And even if they weren’t, the hospital would have to report his wound to the sheriff, which was as good as reporting his presence to Ag Con.

Bolan already knew that Ag Con somehow had its hooks into the sheriff, which was the only possible explanation for the bogus incident report the sheriff filed after the Ag Con sniper had tried to kill him and Kemp the previous afternoon. The Executioner hadn’t seen the report himself, but Kurtzman had obtained a copy of it the moment Buck entered it into the North Dakota State Bureau of Criminal Investigation computer system. The sheriff was dirty. How dirty, Bolan didn’t know, but he did know the man couldn’t be trusted.

“I’ve been shot,” Bolan told Kemp.

“My God!” Kemp exclaimed. “Is it serious?”

“It’s not good,” he told her. “It could get serious in a hurry if I don’t do something about it soon.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m about a half-hour ride from where we parked the horse trailer yesterday. How soon can you be there?”

“It’s about a forty-five-minute drive,” she said. “I can be there in half an hour.”

“Watch your back,” Bolan warned. He tried to sound strong to keep from spooking Kemp, but after he put his phone away he realized he’d lost more blood than he’d thought. It took all the concentration he had to remain in the saddle and control his horse as it trotted through the rugged terrain. He checked his watch, more to give him something to focus on than to see the time, an attempt to keep from passing out.

Bolan used the last of his strength to negotiate the switchback trail that led down to the parking area where he was supposed to meet Kemp, feeling consciousness slipping away. The soldier summoned all the inner strength he could muster to dismount his horse and remove the saddle and bridle. The fewer clues he left for his pursuers, the better. When he was done, he gave the horse a weak slap on the rump and sent it scampering into the Badlands. The last thing he saw before he passed out on top of the saddle was a pair of headlights coming into the parking lot. He hoped to hell they belonged to Kemp’s pickup.

“DID YOU STOP HIM?” Chen asked Liang over the radio.

“No, sir,” Liang replied. “I wounded him, but he was able to kill the horse I was riding before I could get another shot at him. I am sorry, sir.”

Chen knew that the colonel would stop at nothing in pursuit of prey—the man seemed to have no fear, even of death. If this intruder was able to make Liang break off the chase, especially after being wounded, then Chen knew they were up against a seasoned professional.

“Were you wounded?” he asked Liang.

“No, sir. My horse stopped the one bullet the man fired before he got away.”

“Did you get a look at the man?”

“Not a good look, sir, but I believe it was the man who was with the veterinarian yesterday.”

This news concerned Chen. Gordon Gould had sent him the information that the sheriff had collected on this man, Matt Cooper, and everything he’d seen worried him. There was nothing in the report that indicated that Cooper would present any problems, which in itself was the problem. The man was simply too clean. No messy divorces—no marriages for that matter—no disciplinary problems in the military, but also nothing outstanding. No criminal background, not even a parking ticket.

Everything pointed to a professional cleansing of this man’s entire history. Such a thorough cleansing would require cooperation at the highest levels of government. It would also require resources far beyond the reach of any “security consultant,” whatever that was. Clearly this Cooper was well-connected, meaning he either worked for some governmental agency, or at the very least worked with one.

But which one? Not the CIA—of that Chen could be certain. Chen and his comrades were leaving nothing to chance; they were betting everything on the success of their plan. They had a man inside the CIA, and if the Agency had a resource on the ground in North Dakota, Chen would have known about it. Likewise Chen had eyes and ears inside the FBI and there was no activity from that quarter. The NSA was a tougher nut to crack, but as far as Chen knew, its operations began and ended with gathering information. The capacity to convert that information to genuine action seemed beyond them. And as far as Chen was concerned the Department of Homeland Security was pathetic beyond being even a joke, a bloated bureaucracy that was nothing more than a halfway house for utter incompetents owed political favors.

That eliminated every known source of this intrusion on their operations, but wasn’t terribly helpful in deducing who actually did employ Cooper. Other than the obviously doctored background report that the sheriff had pulled, Chen knew only one thing about the large man—he was extremely dangerous. The man needed to be stopped.

“How far do you estimate Cooper has traveled since you last saw him?” Chen asked.

“Possibly two miles, no more than three.”

Chen pondered his options. The helicopters were at the northeast unit of the ranch nearly one hundred miles away and could not be called back in time to help with the chase, and the terrain was too rough to use vehicles, even ATVs. The only way to pursue this intruder was on horseback. Chen needed to act fast if he was to have any chance of capturing Cooper.

“I’m sending out a patrol on horseback,” he stated. “One of them will have your Arabian. I want you to meet up with them and get back on the trail of the intruder. Give me your GPS coordinates.”

BOLAN WOKE UP to find himself lying on an operating table, but he wasn’t in a hospital. A pair of bright green eyes peered at him from over a hospital face mask. Kristen Kemp sewed the last stitches into his shoulder. He watched her finish and then remove a needle from his left arm. She placed a cotton ball over the hole left by the needle and taped it down.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she told him. “By all rights you should still be sleeping.”

“Are we in your clinic?” he asked. He looked around at the Spartan operation. He appeared to be in an operating room, lying on a stainless-steel table. Through an open door he saw a plain lobby bereft of plants, wall hangings, or other items that might provide comfort to a worried pet owner. This place was all business, like the people of the region themselves. It really was a large-animal clinic, a glorified metal barn designed to keep people’s business tools—their horses and cattle—healthy. There didn’t appear to be a lot of resources devoted to pampering pet owners.

“Why do you ask? You have a problem being treated by a veterinarian? Are you afraid I might get confused and neuter you?”

“In my line of work I consider having a bullet removed by a veterinarian luxury treatment,” he said. “It beats doing it myself.”

“That must be some line of work you have. I don’t think I’m going to sign up for security-consulting duty any time soon.”

Bolan sat up and tried to collect his thoughts. “How long was I out?” he asked.

“About an hour.”

Bolan tried to focus on the logistics of what had just happened. By this point his pursuers may or may not have found his horse. “Did you bring my horse tack?” he asked.