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The SWAT commander nodded. “Get going. I want this place cleared—”
That’s when the roof came down in a choking cloud of dust. All Reader could hear was the cry of his best friend, Graham.
“Stretch!”
Pattaya, Thailand
AS SOON AS THE AIRCRAFT carrier’s helicopters loomed into radar range, Bolan and Grimaldi had taken off. They hovered in place long enough to watch the enemy submarine break apart. Bolan had made sure that it was only a diesel engine, and not a refurbished sub with nuclear power. His simple breaching charges were enough to turn the diesel engines into a bomb powerful enough to split the vehicle in two. Battered Korean survivors had been dumped into inflatable rafts and set adrift to explain what the hell they were doing in the area. Meanwhile, one less black market submarine patrolled the globe’s waters, snapped into two pieces and its ruined innards dumped to the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand.
At the airfield and Bolan’s temporary forward base in-country, he hooked up the severed IDE cables to a Stony Man laptop slot and had Aaron Kurtzman and the cybernetic team go over the hard drive via satellite uplink.
“Get some sleep,” Kurtzman told him. “It’ll take awhile to get what we need off the drive.”
“Will do,” Bolan answered. He made certain that their hangar was secured first, cleaned his pistols, slid the Desert Eagle under his pillow and went to sleep. Grimaldi had already sacked out after making sure that Dragon Slayer was in working order.
SEVEN HOURS LATER Grimaldi was up, having dry cereal and coffee as his morning meal, when Bolan joined him. “Mornin’, Sarge.”
“Any word from Aaron yet?” Bolan asked.
“Nope,” Grimaldi answered. “Want some grub?”
“I’ll make it myself once I change,” Bolan answered. The hangar hadn’t been equipped with a locker room that had a shower, so Bolan grabbed some clean clothes and a couple of towels and washed in the sink, scrubbing himself.
Bolan poured himself a bowl of dry cereal and helped himself to some coffee. Without a decent refrigerator, milk was out of the question. He supplemented his sparse grub with an apple.
It was boring, waiting, but the Executioner spent the time focusing on what he needed to do. He looked over maps to keep himself sharp on the area, and after refreshing his navigational knowledge, listened to radio reports to keep abreast of international news.
Three stories into the report, he listened to information about a Korean street gang who had robbed a federal bank in Salt Lake City. They’d escaped through the sewer system, and had set off an explosion that collapsed part of the building. Authorities were still trying to figure out the actual identities of the robbers, but promised swift arrests and resolutions.
The mention of the Korean street gang stuck in the Executioner’s mind. The prostituted young women were being shipped to North Korea in some form of trade. They were traveling concurrently with American and European style cattle, not common to Southeast Asia.
He’d heard plenty of rumors and stories over the years about UFOs and cattle mutilations around northern Utah, at a place called Dugway Proving Grounds. He remembered the actual facts about Dugway simply because several years ago there had been a leak of anthrax that had killed hundreds of heads of livestock in the area, and could have wiped out thousands of civilians if the winds had shifted during the containment breach.
Dugway was one of those places that remained on Bolan’s radar. He’d encountered dozens of efforts by foreign governments and terrorists to invade American bioweapons institutes across his long and bloody career. The Executioner had also encountered Chinese crime gangs abroad who did the dirty work of Communist Chinese intelligence services on more than enough occasions to never rule out the possibility that a group of common street punks could be working for a “higher” purpose.
North Korea was involved in smuggling humans and livestock, and there was talk of a mystery package from the captain of the freighter. And now, there’d been an incident involving a high-profile bank robbery and Korean street gangs in the backyard of one of the largest bioweapon containment breaches in recorded history.
It added up to a strange combination that orbited Bolan’s mind. When he got on the line with Kurtzman, he’d have to bring it up.
The laptop beeped. The monitor switched to a communication panel and Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came over the line. “Striker…”
“I’m on,” Bolan replied, activating the laptop’s built-in microphone. “What’s up?”
“You hear about the possible Korean street gang involvement in a Salt Lake City bank robbery?” Kurtzman asked.
“Yeah. That got your attention, too?” Bolan commented.
“It hit some of my buttons. I noticed something strange, too, in the livestock on its way to Korea,” Kurtzman answered.
“Rancher brands from near Salt Lake City?” Bolan asked.
Kurtzman didn’t sound surprised by Bolan’s wild guess. “You looked at them and recognized the brands?”
“Nope. Just a stab in the dark,” Bolan replied. “Any thoughts on if they could have been faked?” Bolan asked, getting back on topic.
“Brands aren’t national secrets, Striker,” Kurtzman responded. “Anyone with a good search engine would be able to pick up samples of all these brands. You’re thinking what?”
Bolan’s jaw tensed. “Dugway, livestock and anthrax all had one point in time where they were linked.”
“Yeah, that caught my attention, too,” Kurtzman answered. “We’re sitting on the information about the cattle brands and conducting covert inquiries about any cattle rustling.”
“Anything?” Bolan asked.
“Just that a rancher found another mutilated cow as of last week,” the Stony Man computer genius replied.
Bolan’s brow furrowed. “Any photographs?”
“I’ll transmit them to your laptop.”
“How good is the resolution?” Bolan asked.
Grimaldi winced and gave a yelp as he looked at a cow head, its lips seared away to expose bare teeth. “Good grief!”
“Good enough,” Kurtzman answered.
“Sorry,” Grimaldi replied.
Bolan looked at the carcass a little more closely. “Interesting.”
“What?” Kurtzman replied.
“The soft tissue was all excised—lips, organs, eyes…”
“Yeah. Same as always.”
“And bloodless. No mess on the ground,” Bolan added.
“Standard operating procedure with all these mutilations,” Kurtzman responded. “No clues left behind as to how these things were slaughtered on scene, and yet no blood was found.”
“And if you were a homicide detective, what would you conclude?” Bolan prodded.
“That the animal was slaughtered somewhere else and brought to the ‘crime scene,’” Kurtzman stated. “But these are animals that should have been missing in the morning.”
“Allegedly,” Bolan responded. “After all, cows are cows.”
“There are some distinguishing marks, and the brands…”
“Aaron, what was the age range among the livestock found on the freighter?” Bolan asked.
“Various ages, and various stages of marking. Striker, what are you getting at?”
“This makes a good smoke screen,” Bolan stated. “If people are wondering why one animal was brutally mutilated in a manner that leaves no forensic evidence, they might not be looking at something else.”
“Like contraband inserted in the carcass’s body cavity?” Kurtzman replied.
“More than one carcass, likely,” Bolan stated. “It’s an open field, right?”
“So, the one missing animal…”
“Would be matched up to a body that, after all the mutilation, would be as identical as possible,” Bolan stated.
“Some corpses have been described as outsize for the missing animals, as if they’d been mutated…”
“Or it was just an animal with similar fur patterns as the smaller missing cow. Hollowed out with its soft tissue missing, it would look like something could have deformed the animal,” Bolan explained.
“You take all the fun out of conspiracy theories,” Kurtzman mumbled.
“I’ve yet to run into a conspiracy that was fun,” Bolan retorted.
“Usually because they’re out to kill you,” Kurtzman added.
“There’s that,” Bolan replied. “Smuggling from Korea to Utah…but not the other way around?”
“Perhaps the exports from the area are of a more subtle means,” Kurtzman mused. “Though, that explains why the bank robbers were armed with 5.45 mm ComBloc ammunition.”
“Five point forty-five?” Bolan asked. “Usually street gangs use either stolen National Guard M-16s, in 5.56 mm, or AK-47s smuggled up from Central and South America, in 7.62 mm. That’s still cutting-edge equipment. How’d you find that out?”
“FBI agents at the scene figured it out after they tore apart a police car,” Kurtzman explained. “I’m sending what reports we have. Unfortunately, any other forensic analysis is going to be put on hold since half the bank collapsed.”
“The hostages?”
“Alive and well,” Kurtzman informed him. “The FBI and police rushed the bank as soon as the robbers disappeared into the basement. They evacuated everyone before the building came down.”
“Anyone hurt?” Bolan asked.
“A SWAT commander suffered a broken collarbone and three broken ribs, and an FBI contract agent took a whack on the head, but they’re okay.”
Bolan nodded. “Who was the contract agent, one of our blacksuits?”
“No, but he’s a friend of one of our irregulars, Kirby Graham,” Kurtzman stated. “I don’t know if you met…”
“Close Quarters Combat training in hazardous material environments, three years ago,” Bolan stated. “It was a refresher course for me as much as it was for them.”
“Good memory,” Kurtzman complimented.
“It helps in this business,” the Executioner replied. “And the contract agent?”
“Old college buddy of his, Professor Stan Reader.”
“I’ve heard of him, too,” Bolan stated. “Buck Greene and I have wanted to vet him for the blacksuit program, but he’s just a shade too high profile to fit in with the Sensitive Operations Group. Nuclear physicist and a professional biathlete, among other things.”
“Get in touch with Graham,” Bolan stated. “If Reader’s up to it, I’d like them keeping the Farm informed of everything on Utah’s end of things.”
“You’re not coming back here?” Kurtzman asked.
“I’ll be taking the scenic route, Aaron,” Bolan told him. “I hear that North Korea is quite pleasant at times like this.”
“And what time is that?” Kurtzman asked.
The Executioner took a deep breath. “Blitz time.”
He signed off and prepared for his infiltration of North Korea.
CHAPTER FIVE
Salt Lake City, Utah
“Now take it easy, Stretch,” Kirby Graham admonished as Stan Reader pulled on his shirt. “You took a good clobberin’ when that bank fell on you. You’re lucky to have had such a short hospital stay.”
Reader glanced at his old friend. “You know I bounce back pretty well. Once you showed me that a few knocks won’t kill me…”
He stood and fought off some momentary dizziness. “Lieber still mad at you?”
“He’d take a potato peeler to my ass and dip what’s left over in lemon juice if he could,” Graham replied. The Fed smirked.
“So what’s so funny?” Reader asked.
“Seems I had an old boss call in some favors to cover me,” Graham stated.
“An old friend? Wasn’t me, Kirby,” Reader said.
“No, not you,” Graham replied. “I did a little hush-hush security work at an installation a couple years back.”
“CIA?” Reader asked.
Graham shrugged. “Never really could tell. But I know I have the Justice Department watching out for me. Even though Lieber has me and Rachel in the dog house, there’s nothing they can really do to us with my guardian angel.”
“So you really don’t need me to bail you out?” Reader concluded, looking a little crestfallen.
“Aw, come on, Stretch, you know I’d join you in a heartbeat,” Graham stated. “Even if we were just running a garage or a greasy diner.”
“Kirby, you’re sheep-dipped. Maybe by the CIA, maybe by someone a little more covert. You think they’ll let you gallivant all over the world with me?” Reader asked.
Graham shrugged. “They gave me a ring while the doctors were still running X-rays on you. They’re interested in having you pitch in here.”
“Me?” Reader asked. “And you told them I’d help? You know, I have some morals, Kirby.”
“Yeah. These guys that have me sheep-dipped, they’ve got some morals, too.”
