Toxic Terrain. Don Pendleton

aimed for open flesh. His shot was dead-on and a gaping wound opened in the man’s trachea. The bullet sheared the man’s spine just below the base of the skull, and he tumbled from his vehicle.

      Before the man hit the ground, Bolan had already fired on the ATV rider who was next in line. He didn’t have a clear shot at the man’s neck, so he punched a round through the man’s goggles.

      The two ATV riders who were behind their fallen comrades both reacted in different ways. The rider who was farther back stopped and tried to get behind his vehicle for cover, while the closer rider opened up his throttle and came bouncing toward Bolan at top speed. The soldier put a round right into the armpit of the man who was clambering off his ATV, and the guy fell from sight. Then Bolan targeted the rider coming at him on the ATV. It took two shots to stop him. Since he was so close to the butte, Bolan had to shoot almost straight down at him, taking him out with a shot through the top of his helmet.

      All of this took place in a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for the shooter in the cupola atop the barn to start firing at Bolan’s position. Bullets started knocking up chunks of dirt all around the Executioner, and at least a dozen armed men had left the compound and were running toward him. Bolan scooped up the sat phone, scrambled back to the far edge of the butte and leaped over the edge, half falling, half running down the steep embankment. When he reached the bottom he ran toward his horse. He knew the terrain would be too rough for anything but foot travel or horseback, so he ran at top speed through the bottoms of the maze of washes and gullies that made up the Badlands, knowing that he could keep ahead of the Ag Con goons.

      The ringing in Bolan’s ears had finally subsided. He regained his hearing just in time; voices in the brush ahead told Bolan that he also had to worry about what was in front of him as well as what was coming up behind. He could make out two distinct voices speaking with each other in the far end of the wash. He was still a good mile from his horse.

      As quietly as he could, the soldier climbed to the top of the wash and took cover in a shrubby growth of juniper trees. From his vantage point he could see four armed men through his FLIR sight. A quick scan in the other direction showed Bolan that the armed men from the compound who were spread out and combing the area looking for him were closing in.

      He pulled a pin from an M-67 fragmentation grenade and lobbed the bomb toward the men in the wash, then ducked behind a pile of rocks and clay. Though he was out of the kill radius of the grenade, he was still close enough to be wounded by flying shrapnel.

      One of the men in the wash had time to utter, “What the…” just before the grenade detonated. Bolan also heard the sound of other guards coming down the path he’d just made through the shrubs, but before he could identify his trackers, the bomb went off. When the Executioner scanned for survivors after the blast, all he saw was the brightly colored thermal signatures of a leg and a couple of arms amid the less brightly colored signature of the bloody mist that was all that remained of the four men.

      He did make out another five-man patrol heading toward the sound of the explosion. Bolan once again broke into a full-speed run through the rough terrain and made it to his horse. He didn’t take time to scan for his pursuers with the FLIR, but he hoped they were still combing the area and not making nearly as good time as he was. Bolan untied the horse and led it out of the draw as quietly as possible. After about a quarter mile he reached the trail he rode in on. He could hear his pursuers closing in by the time he mounted the horse and gave it his heels. The horse broke into a run just as a man emerged from a stand of junipers at the rim of a ridge that ran parallel to the trail. The gunner fired a full-auto burst at the fleeing soldier, but Bolan had already put enough distance between them for the shots to fall short. The horse was given its lead and it ran until Bolan was certain he’d gotten far enough away from his pursuers.

      2

      Chen Zhen erupted from the barn door before the report from the first shot had quit echoing off the distant buttes. He watched as the ATV-mounted patrols were mowed down as they descended on the shooter’s position on the butte to the east of the ranch. They were supposed to be good—they’d chosen Build & Berg Associates because of their reputation as the best private military contractor available—but so far they hadn’t impressed Chen as especially competent.

      At least he had his own men upon which he could depend, troops handpicked from among the very best the People’s Liberation Army had to offer, and Yao Rui, the sharpshooter manning the cupola, had been one of the PLA’s finest snipers. Before Chen could make out the exact location of the shots coming from the butte, he heard Yao’s Barrett M-98 unleash several rounds. The booming of the powerful .338 Lapua Magnum rounds rang through the Badlands like the sonic boom from a jet fighter, but Chen couldn’t see any sign that they’d hit their target.

      Chen grabbed the radio clipped to his belt, pressed the talk button and heard the voice of Colonel Liang Wu, his associate who oversaw the PLA contingent and acted as his liaison with B&B Associates. Chen’s English was rudimentary at best, while Liang was fluent in not only English, but also Russian and French, as well as several of the other languages spoken by the eclectic collection of mercenaries that comprised the B&B contingent.

      “Find out what’s happening,” Chen ordered, “and report back to me the instant you have information.”

      Chen had no idea who was trespassing on Ag Con property, but at least he knew who it wasn’t. Chen knew Ag Con had nothing to fear from the authorities. Gordon Gould had assured him that he would take care of officials from the local law-enforcement agency, which consisted of that fat buffoon Jim Buck and his simpleminded deputies. Likewise Governor Chauvin had given his assurance that Ag Con could count on nothing but the utmost support from the state highway-patrol department. Ag Con was the state’s largest employer and had single-handedly kept North Dakota’s economy growing throughout the United States’ most recent economic turmoil.

      Chauvin, who had his sights set on a seat in the U.S. Senate, was not about to let anything like a criminal investigation get in the way of commerce or his political future. Ag Con supplied the butter that Chauvin put upon his bread. Chen knew that wasn’t the exact translation for the American idiomatic expression, but he knew it was close. Chauvin aspired to a higher office, and for that to happen, he needed the campaign funding that Ag Con provided. That’s how things worked in a so-called democracy, Chen thought. In his opinion the word seemed to be code for a system of political prostitution, in which an oligarchy of corporate pimps like Ag Con ran a stable of political whores like Chauvin. To keep this illusion of democracy alive, the political whores spouted rhetoric designed to appease one political faction or another. They seemed to focus on emotionally charged but ultimately meaningless issues to keep their constituency distracted from the real matter at hand, which appeared to be financially raping the population.

      Chen had spent much time with Governor Chauvin, and he wasn’t convinced the governor would have spurned Ag Con’s financial resources even if he had known the corporation’s real motive, which was nothing less than the complete destabilization of the U.S. economy. Chauvin most likely would win his seat in the U.S. Senate, but by the time that occurred, the Senate would not have a stable civilization to govern. Chen wasn’t sure that Chauvin possessed the intellectual tools to comprehend Ag Con’s plans even if he knew of them. If their plans were successful—when, not if, Chen reminded himself—the United States would devolve into societal chaos that would make countries like Somalia and Haiti seem stable.

      Regardless of whether or not he had the intelligence to comprehend such possibilities, Chauvin had effectively removed the state police from the equation. That left the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which answered not to Chauvin but to North Dakota’s attorney general, Jack Pullman. They were even less a threat than the highway patrol because Gould had video footage of Pullman having sex with a prostitute. When confronted with evidence of his illicit activity, Pullman had been willing to make any compromise in order to keep his secret safe.

      When it came to doing business in North Dakota, Ag Con was above the law, meaning that the intruder killing his men from atop the butte was something other than official. Most likely it had something to do with the abduction of the extension agent and the veterinarian.