“Do you want to see the rest?” Gould asked.
“I’ve seen enough,” Buck said and Gould stopped the DVD.
“Isn’t that the mother of your children?” Gould asked.
Buck didn’t respond. He had his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. The sheriff was crying.
“Look,” Gould said. “I know you feel like killing me. I know you feel like killing her. But where will your kids be if their mamma’s dead and their daddy’s in prison for killing her? Don’t be mad at her. Gambling is a powerful addiction. Wouldn’t it just be easier to fill out the report the way I tell you to fill it out? Take care of this issue for me, then you get her the help she needs. I’ll even pay for it.”
WHEN BOLAN WAS four miles from Ag Con’s main complex in Trotters, North Dakota, he tethered his horse to a juniper in a deep wash where the animal wouldn’t be seen unless an aircraft flew directly over it. The satellite intel he’d received from Stony Man Farm had been sketchy—there weren’t a lot of satellites readily available to look at this remote part of the world, since it wasn’t exactly a high-priority hot spot for any of the world’s intelligence agencies—but from what he’d seen, the complex, which consisted of corrugated-steel pole buildings and an old ranch house that had been converted into office space, as well as a few barns and other outbuildings left over from the complex’s previous life as a working ranch, appeared to be patrolled by armed guards.
Bolan was armed with his rifle, which he wore from a three-point sling so he could access it while riding, as well as his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle and his silenced Beretta 93-R machine pistol. But this was a soft probe, and Bolan had no intention of shedding any blood on this excursion. Even though he didn’t buy the sheriff’s conclusion about that morning’s shooting being an accident, he had no hard evidence that the shooter had been acting on orders from his employer. The Executioner had no qualms about doling out judgment on the guilty, but he drew the line at murdering the innocent, and the Ag Con employees were innocent until he knew for certain that was not the case.
When he was within one thousand yards of the complex, he made his way to the top of the highest butte he could find. It was mid-July and most of the accessible grass had been grazed by this time of year, but not even the heartiest Badlands cattle could have made their way up the steep slopes of the butte. The grass at the top, though sparse, was tall and provided good cover. Bolan crawled through the grass to the edge of the butte nearest the compound and scanned the complex with a pair of 18-power binoculars that were the next best thing to being there. He identified four men carrying rifles patrolling the perimeter on quads. Inside the fence he counted at least four more armed patrols on the ground. An old hip-roof barn appeared to have been converted into office space or sleeping quarters; its windows had been recently replaced, and an industrial-size air-conditioning unit cooled the building. Bolan noted that there was an additional window-style air-conditioning unit mounted in the oversize cupola atop the barn. On closer examination, Bolan saw that the cupola was air-conditioned for the comfort of the armed guard posted inside. Several other armed guards were stationed around the barn itself.
The level of security was nothing short of bizarre. Most cattle operations in the area needed only the security of a big dog or perhaps some alpacas to keep coyotes and other predators away from the calves. Even though the Little Missouri National Grasslands—a chunk of land that covered more than a million acres in western North Dakota—was all open-grazing, meaning the cattle roamed on more or less free range, most ranchers kept their herds together and they knew one another’s brands and tags. The closest anyone ever got to rustling was when a stray animal accidentally ended up in someone else’s herd, and those situations were usually solved with no hard feelings. Though most people out here carried at least one firearm at all times, and often two, that had more to do with the chance of running into a rattlesnake or buffalo that had strayed from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, or a rogue Angus or Hereford, than with fear of humans.
A Bell 210 helicopter flew over the river and landed in the complex just as the sun sank below the western horizon. Except for the yellow-and-red “Ag Con” decal on its side, the 210 was painted flat black. The first helicopter had barely landed when a second came in from the north. Again, while unusual, Ag Con’s flying a couple of helicopters out here wasn’t unreasonable. The company ran twenty thousand head of cattle in a range that covered over more than sixteen hundred square miles. It would be a challenge to cover it all on ATVs and horses.
But the men wearing full battle gear inside the helicopters were a little harder to explain. Bolan had a hard time imagining a legitimate use for the grenade launchers mounted beneath their QBZ Type 97 assault rifles. Grenades weren’t the most useful tools for rounding up cattle or mending fences. The rifles themselves, modern bullpup-style weapons, with their grenade launchers poking out from under their barrels, looked as out of place in the Western landscape. Not to mention that the Type 97 had never been legally imported into the United States.
Several other men came out of the guarded barn dragging something that eliminated any doubts Bolan might have still harbored regarding the nature of the Ag Con operation—two figures, a male and a female, both with their hands and feet zip-tied together and black hoods draped over their heads. They had to be Pam Bowman and Roger Grevoy. Seeing the two captives was all the evidence Bolan needed to turn this into a shooting war.
Though he was well-armed, the Executioner could see no way to turn this soft probe hard without endangering the captives. Bolan had taken on more people than were guarding the compound and lived to tell about it, but if he started shooting now, there was no way he could take out all the enemy before they executed Bowman and Grevoy.
He watched as the prisoners were loaded onto one of the helicopters and flown from the compound. The Bell had a maximum range of 225 nautical miles, but since it hadn’t refueled, its destination was likely much less than that. The helicopter headed northeast and was soon followed by the second helicopter. There was no cell phone service this far into the Badlands, but Bolan had brought a satellite phone in case he needed some help from Stony Man. Bolan punched in Kurtzman’s secure number, but before he heard the big man’s gruff voice answer, he felt a gun barrel touch the back of his head.
“Put down the phone,” a voice behind him said.
Bolan, still in a prone position, started to put the phone down in an exaggerated slow-motion movement. Hoping that the man’s attention was on his arm, the soldier swept his leg around behind him where he estimated the man would be standing. His calf hooking around the other man’s leg told the soldier that he had guessed correctly, and the man fell to the ground. Bolan felt the barrel of the gun slide away from the back of his head at the same time he felt the man fall. The man squeezed the trigger an instant after the tip of the barrel left the back of Bolan’s scalp and he felt a hot line sear across the back of his head. The bullet didn’t hit him with enough force to cause any concussive damage, but the report from the rifle deafened the soldier—all he could hear was loud ringing.
But he didn’t have time to worry about any permanent hearing loss. He flipped upright and drew his Desert Eagle before the man hit the ground. There was no point bothering with the silenced Beretta, since the soft probe had already gone hard. Bolan aimed and fired. The big 240-grain bullet put a crater the size of a walnut in the man’s forehead and took half his skull with it on the way out.
Bolan still couldn’t hear anything but ringing, but he knew the bad guys would be coming at him in force. He rolled back over and scanned the compound. By this time the sun had gone below the horizon, so he turned on the FLIR thermal imaging sight he’d mounted on the DPMS rifle. Sure enough, all four ATV riders were headed his way, as were a number of foot patrols from inside the compound. Bolan fired a shot at the ATV rider nearest the butte, hitting him in the gap between his full-coverage helmet and the chest protector of his motocross body armor. The .260 round would easily punch through the ABS plastic of the man’s riding gear, but Bolan, who was used to fighting