Don Pendleton - Toxic Terrain

“I figured it must have been important for you to take the time to remove it in your condition, so, yes, I made sure I grabbed it. You must be awfully fond of that saddle.”

Bolan remained silent, contemplating the likelihood that they’d been followed. If the Ag Con men found his horse, they wouldn’t be able to positively identify it as his, and without leaving the tack behind, they wouldn’t have a starting point from which to begin their search. On the other hand, they knew that Bolan was somehow connected to Kemp, so they’d almost certainly come after her, meaning that they weren’t safe here.

Kemp put her hands on Bolan’s bare shoulders and tried to get him to lie back down. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she repeated. “You should rest.”

“We’re not safe here,” Bolan said.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said as she covered his wound with a sterile bandage. “Grassy Butte has 250 people, and I know every last one of them personally. No one’s going to harm us here.”

“Have you ever been shot at before yesterday?” he asked.

“No.”

“Whatever you thought you knew about this place changed the moment that happened,” he told her. “Grassy Butte suddenly became a whole lot less hospitable. Those 250 people you think you know? You can’t trust any of them, not for the time being. Something big is going on here. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that it’s damned dangerous.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. As Kemp leaned forward to apply another adhesive strip to his bandages, Bolan saw a shadow of a man holding what could only be a gun outlined in the window behind her. He reached out to grab the woman and flipped her over him. Before she landed on the hard-tiled floor, automatic gunfire tore through the corrugated steel that comprised the walls of the clinic. Bolan hurled himself down on top of her.

The bullets ripped through the metal walls, its insulation and inner plasterboard like they were paper, but the rounds didn’t have enough energy to penetrate the stainless-steel operating table behind which Bolan and Kemp hunkered.

“Where are my weapons?” Bolan asked.

“I’m lying on them,” Kemp replied. She rolled away to reveal most of Bolan’s equipment—his handguns, extra magazines, binoculars and sat phone—along with an extremely bloody shirt with a large hole in the left shoulder.

Bolan pulled the Desert Eagle from its holster and chanced a peek around the edge of the operating table. He could see a streetlight, which was what cast the shadow that had alerted him to the shooter—likely just one of many, judging from the amount of lead flying through the clinic. From the angle of the light he estimated the location of the shooter, whose shadow he could still see in the window glass. He calculated where the man would be standing to cast a shadow at that angle, aimed and fired, punching several holes through the wall in that direction. The hot loads that John “Cowboy” Kissinger had loaded up for him back at Stony Man rammed through the wall at a tick over 1,500 feet per second and found their mark. Bolan watched the shadow in the window drop to the ground, but the rounds kept pouring into the building.

“Is there another way out of here?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah, we can get out the back.”

“That means they can get in the same way,” Bolan said, “but I don’t see many other options here.” The door to the back was directly behind the operating table. Bolan noted that the shots were only coming at them from the front of the building. “I wonder why they aren’t shooting at us from the back.”

“They might be, but they’d have to penetrate about twenty feet of hay bales to reach us. We’ve got hay stored on that side of the building.”

“Have you got any roof vents?”

“Of course,” Kemp said. “We have to comply with building codes.”

“Are they turbine vents?”

“No, only every other one is a turbine,” Kemp said.

“That means we can get out through the others,” Bolan said. “Follow me.”

While they’d been discussing the building’s specifics, Bolan had slipped into the shoulder rig that held his Beretta 93-R and extra magazines. He didn’t bother with the destroyed, bloody shirt. He put the reloaded .44 Magnum handgun back in its holster, which he’d clipped onto his belt, and led the way into the back room with the Beretta.

Scoping out the rear room, which was really just a large barn, complete with pens occupied by various cows, sheep and horses, all of which were extremely distressed due to the gunfire, Bolan saw that the back door was still closed. “I wonder why they haven’t come through the back door?” he asked.

“Probably because of Earl,” Kemp said.

“Earl?”

“He’s an especially foul-tempered Angus bull that we use for sperm,” Kemp replied. “I think they’re going to need something with a little more kick than a .223 to get past Earl.”

Kemp and Bolan made their way to the stack of hay bales along the far wall. They scrambled to the top, then climbed into the metal rafters holding up the roof. The soldier punched out the first roof vent he found and they both climbed onto the roof, Bolan’s feet clearing the vent milliseconds before the shooters burst through the front door.

Bolan looked over the peak of the roof and saw an SUV parked on the street a few feet away from the driveway that led into the clinic’s parking lot. The vehicle appeared empty except for the driver, but it was hard to be certain because of the darkly tinted windows. He saw that the men in front of the building had entered through the front door, probably expecting to find perforated bodies. But the only person in the front of the building was the man Bolan had shot, and he wasn’t moving. Two men stood guard at the rear of the building, just outside Earl’s pen, waiting to see if anyone came out the back.

The drop to the ground was too far to risk jumping. A sprained or broken ankle would be a death sentence for both of them, but Bolan saw an option—a large manger filled with alfalfa for Earl to munch on. But first the soldier had to deal with the sentries, and he had to do it fast, because judging from the commotion in the building, the shooters had discovered that they hadn’t succeeded in killing him and Kemp. Bolan aimed the sound-suppressed Beretta at the farthest sentry and drilled a round right between his eyes. The man’s buddy saw him fall and looked up for the source of the coughing sound made by the Beretta, but before he could raise his own gun, Bolan put a second round through the top of his head, dropping him like a stone. Then the Executioner stood up and fired three quick rounds through the SUV’s open driver’s window. It was dark inside the SUV cab, but Bolan saw the outline of spray issuing from the driver’s head as the man slumped forward, setting off the SUV’s horn.

“Now what?” Kemp asked.

“Now we jump.” Bolan grabbed the woman around the waist and jumped down into Earl’s manger. The falling bodies startled the bull and he lunged away. Before he comprehended the fact that he had visitors, both Bolan and Kemp were running for the corral. Earl gathered his wits and charged the pair, but they managed to grab the rail of the corral and hurl themselves out of the pen just before the bull crashed into its metal bars. That made Earl angrier, and he was about to charge the fence again when the back door opened and two gunmen came blundering into his pen. The gigantic black bull whirled and before the first man out knew what was happening, Earl ran him down and pummeled his body into the hay and manure. The man’s partner froze, giving the bull an opening, which he put to good use, ramming the sentry against the steel building, snapping his spine.